Do Unto Others
by Lady Salazar
Summary: James made a mistake. Lily got even. In the wake of Voldemort's resurrection, the consequences catch up to Harry, and from there it's demons, dark wizards, and devil hunters. Let's rock! HP/DMC crossover, fifth year AU.
1. devil in the alley

**THIS IS A REPOST.** A BOT ATTACHED ITSELF TO THIS FIC AND THIS IS MY ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE IT.

THIS IS THE SAME STORY THAT WAS POSTED CIRCA 18 MONTHS AGO. MY APOLOGIES FOR THE REDUNDANT POST.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and Devil May Cry belong to their respective owners. No money is being made by the author of this fic. (Only sweat and tears.)

Notes: This was written, like most of my fics, as my idea of how HP/DMC could/should happen as a crossover, as well as a way to improve my action scenes. Expect asskicking. Expect bad oneliners. Expect pizza. Expect LOTS of demons. In the backdrop, expect growth. However, don't expect Harry to say 'flock off' to everything he ever cared for, don't expect fluffy romance, don't expect sappy wubtimes and shove your angst. Timeline wise, this is OotP AU for Harry Potter and between DMC and DMC4 for Dante. Warnings for implicit and semiexplicit gore, lots of blood, minor sexual themes/innuendo, and cursing. It's Devil May Cry, what did you expect?

* * *

 _ **Do Unto Others**_

 _There are two types of family: family by blood and family by choice._

* * *

Harry felt a glimmer of power in the air, just in time to seize Dudley and shove the larger boy behind him as a thick haze of red energy appeared from nowhere. His wand was in his hand in the instant it took to coalesce, but the spell on his lips went unspoken in his shock. What had been empty alley was now taken up by half a dozen hunched, snarling things. Monsters.

"What the hell?" Dudley squeaked, voicing Harry's thought. Like dementors, with tattered cloaks, their flaccid, rotting skin visible to the eye, only dementors didn't have glowing eyes, and they definitely didn't have _scythes_ -

The foremost monster lunged, and Harry roused from his stupor. " _Reducto_!"

It erupted, showering Magnolia Crescent with sand. This energized the others, as they crowded forward, lashing out with their scythes. Harry shot off another blasting curse as he backed up, following the sounds of Dudley's retreating feet, until they came to an abrupt halt with a scream. Leaping back, he chanced a glance; more of the monsters were approaching from behind, and his cousin was stumbling away from a red clownish one. Barely ducking a slash from his side, Harry threw a reductor spell toward the red one, turning quickly to bisect another with a cutting curse. This left the two remaining monsters right in his face, so he threw himself to the ground lashing upwards with a banisher. Rolling away and to his feet, he barked, " _Inflamare_!" and the advanced fire spell set them alight.

Then Harry turned back to the others, just in time for a second red monster's scythe to sink into his gut.

He made a sound like a strangled cat, clutching at the weapon's handle as he stumbled. The monster made as to pull it out, but Harry's grip on it tightened as he looked up and brought his wand to bear. The point-blank blasting curse turned the monster's upper body to dust, and the rest of it disintegrated in turn, even the blade still in his stomach. Paradoxically, what he saw made him laugh. Though clearly terrified, Dudley lashed out with a meaty fist, knocking the closest of the monsters on its back.

Only for another to take its place. Harry didn't like his cousin, but he didn't want him dead. " _Accio_!"

Dudley yelped as the spell yanked him up and away from the knot of enemies; one was quick enough to tear at his flying legs as he passed, ripping open a cut in one calf and causing him to scream again. Harry side-stepped to avoid a collision and sent a spell rocketing at the first monster to take chase.

"Get the hell out of here."

Dudley didn't need telling twice, immediately hobbling away.

The pain in his stomach was making it difficult to think clearly, but Harry knew he couldn't afford to let anything close in on him again. He cast another fire summoning spell, pairing it with a wind spell for effect, and took grim satisfaction in the inhuman shrieks that followed. Taking a deep breath, he turned to make his own getaway but stopped.

 _Damn it._

Thick red mist hung in the air. Unlike before, it seemed to hover, thick and cloying, and it made the hair on the back of Harry's neck stand up. Something was wrong, and it was centered in the haze. But he didn't have the chance to question it; Harry swallowed some bile and forced his body to cooperate as he dashed through the mist after Dudley, a surviving dark monster lumbering after him. It was hard to breathe in the haze. It filled his nose and mouth with the smell and taste of something metallic and fogged his glasses until he was running blind. Harry yanked them off his face and threw them on the ground, having no time to bother cleaning them.

It was once he was nearly through the energy decided to coalesce, making the air shudder: the only warning before a shockwave blasted him off his feet as the alley behind seemed to explode. Harry landed hard on his right shoulder and cried out as it popped out of joint, breathing raggedly before he scrambled to a standing position facing the new enemy.

 _You've got to be kidding me_.

Tall, easily twice the size of the others, the new arrival had a lanky humanoid figure and pale-and-red raw skin that pulsed, appearing to bleed, and the scythe it wielded was _on fire_. The monster's hunched back was to him, but that didn't permit him a free hex. Though his wand remained in hand after the fall and was thankfully undamaged, the act of raising his arm to cast made him choke back a gasp of pain. Harry switched to his left hand, and he swiped the holly rod in the monster's direction.

" _Reducto_!" Its back splattered, showering Harry with a rain of blood. He felt a moment's relief, before he realized the blow didn't faze the monster at all. He followed the attack with a blast of fire, which missed entirely when it collapsed into a small lake of ooze. A second later, it rose up again, the scythe a blur as it sliced down trailing fire in its wake. The weapon sailed past his shoulder as he sidestepped, warding off the fire with a clumsy barrier spell that just barely managed its job before shattering. Harry realized belatedly that given the monster was using flames, attacking it with fire was probably an exercise in futility.

As his mind raced through the ice and water spells he knew, Harry gave ground, most of his attention focused on the burning blur that was the monster's scythe. Who knew, maybe he'd be able to get out of the alley and get some breathing room –

Harry ducked, just in time, and the scythe flew over his head to embed itself in the ground several feet behind him. A second later, sparks flew, and the shadows were thrown into stark relief as flames rose to cut off any escape. The heat could be felt feet away; this was nothing an extinguishing charm could handle. He growled under his breath in aggravation.

 _So much for that idea._

Harry swished the wand through a short pattern, muttering a quick, " _Aquafrio_!" Instead of the swift spray of magic that encrusted all it touched with ice, holly spewed a thick frigid mist that evaporated as it touched pulsating flesh. The monster snarled in pain nonetheless, liquefying as Harry attempted the spell a second time. Instead of immediately coagulating as before, the ooze flowed over the ground with startling speed and shot up inches from his face; before Harry could react, a long knife of white-hot flame formed and stabbed deep into his left hand. Harry screamed, jerking away, back toward the wall of fire which was no less deadly.

"Pathetic… human… magic…."

 _It's talking. It's talking_. The monster's voice was rough, the words articulated with great care and difficulty, but it was talking. Harry wanted to scream again in frustration. _What the hell is this thing?_

"That… stench…" It seemed to shudder. Straightening from its hunched position, it rivaled Hagrid in sheer height. The glowing points that were its eyes brightened further. "That… blood…"

For some reason, those words pissed Harry off far more than the attack had. His stomach ached. His shoulder throbbed. Harry's hand could still have been on fire. There was no way he could cast another freezing spell. His wand was gone, whether turned to ash or fortuitously dropped to the ground, and Harry had never trained in off-handed dueling in the first place. And the monster was complaining about how his blood stank?

His _blood_.

Thought stopped there.

Stabbing the mangled hand into the wound on his stomach, Harry wiped his stinking blood all up and down his arms. The pain as he upset his dislocated shoulder made dark spots appear in his vision, but he ignored it, staring up at his opponent through narrowed green eyes. The monster had reformed its scythe but not yet attacked, perhaps curious or poisonously amused by his actions. That was convenient, as it was too tall for him to reach without climbing… First, it needed to attack.

Trash talk had never been his strong point, but he doubted it would take much. Harry made a come-hither gesture and spat, "Pathetic, maybe, but I'm not dead yet! What's that make you, ugly?"

The scythe came rocketing down. Mindful that it could burst into flames at any moment, Harry jumped up on the prongs, paying no heed to the sizzling of his skin as he grasped the handle and flung himself up. He landed straddling the monster's forearm, exercising four years of broomstick riding experience to remain seated.

The monster should have liquefied, dropping him ten feet to the ground. He honestly expected it. It probably would have, had it not started howling the instant Harry's blood-covered hands met its flesh. The sizzling sound and burning smell brought new life into Harry's struggle, and he maneuvered up the arm, weathering a blow from the monster's free hand, closing in on the head. Wetting his hand again with fresh blood, Harry pressed it to the humongous face and held on for dear life, just like he had with Quirrel three years past.

 _The man taught me something after all…_

Though his concentration and the pounding of his heart in his ears made it difficult to tell, Harry thought not much time passed before he felt the bestial flesh give under his fingers. His seat began to dissolve. He fell as it collapsed one last time into the lake of blood, which began to dissipate after cushioning his landing. Harry watched cautiously as it vanished entirely, leaving nothing but a glowing white orb in its wake.

The orb sank to the ground, emitting a flash of light. When the flash faded, the still-burning fire illuminated a weapon left behind. The long knife was a steel replicate of the knife the monster had used to stab his hand, its blade stained with flecks of red-brown. A single word stood out in glowing scarlet lettering. Harry squinted to make it out: _Sangreus_.

Harry leaned over slowly, taking the knife's handle. After all that, he figured he deserved something.

"Harry!" The sudden, familiar voice made him start. "Harry! Are you alright?"

"I am now," he answered, exhaustion settling in and turning his tone sharp. "But I'd've been better if you'd turned up ten minutes ago."

Harry was out before Lupin managed to extinguish the fire.

* * *

Harry didn't recognize the place where he woke up, but the faint smell of the purification potions that never ceased to bother his nose told him it had to be some sort of hospital. The ward was dimly lit and somewhat dingy, lit by crystal baubles that hovered in the air like the candles in the Hogwarts Great Hall. A few weak rays of sunlight peeked in through the single window on the opposite end from where he lay next to the door.

Aside from him, the place was empty. Harry scrubbed his eyes and sat up, feeling bandages on his torso shift with him, but the motion caused no pain. Actually, he realized, he didn't feel pain anywhere. His shoulder was not out of joint. His stomach under the wrap was smooth and unmarred, and so was the left hand he remembered so vividly as being pierced by the monster's blade of fire. He wondered, fleetingly, if the entire experience might've been some bizarre dream, before his weak eyes made out the slim wood form on the bedside table.

Harry picked it up, savoring the familiar surge of warmth in his fingers, and frowned. The texture of the wood was different. He knew his wand better than the back of his hand, and it was his wand, but… Pulling it close to his face, the black and dark brown discolorations swam into view, concentrated at the handle. The wood was rougher there, not flaky or splintered, but rough. The short holly rod had taken a beating. Harry was just relieved it was intact. Groping around, he also found a pair of glasses with unfamiliar frames. He put them on anyway, and the prescription was right.

 _Where's the knife?_

At that moment, the door swung open. Harry jumped, wheeling around on the bed to level his wand at the intruder. Brown hair spattered with gray, weathered old robes, a face tired and worn…

"Harry?" said Lupin, nearly dropping his mug in surprise. "You're awake?"

He lowered his wand, feeling a bit foolish. "Professor Lupin? Why are you here? And where am I?"

"You're at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries," Lupin replied lightly, walking over and conjuring himself a chair to sit in. He sipped his drink. "As to why I am here, I should think that would be obvious. You gave us all a scare last night, Harry. There are few wizards capable of fighting off a demon horde unprepared, and all of them are well overage. That you're alive is a miracle."

"A demon horde?" Harry repeated, incredulous.

Lupin nodded, face serious. "It's no surprise you didn't recognize them. When I attended Hogwarts, we didn't cover demons until seventh year, and even then we only covered them sparingly. Professor Bernhardt implied we might not have covered them at all, had Voldemort not used them to such effectiveness." Guessing the question before it was spoken, the werewolf stalled Harry with a hand. "Yes, in the war, Voldemort was infamous for his use of demons against the Ministry. While the demon world was sealed away from ours over two thousand years ago, he knew a method which could weaken the barrier between that world and this, allowing a small number of demons to cross over. You can imagine the chaos that would follow."

Harry thought about what might have happened had the scythe monsters got loose in Privet Drive, let alone the larger blood demon Sangreus, and made a face.

"Occasionally, a far more powerful demon would break through," Lupin continued, seeming to wince in remembrance. "Those times were far worse than merely chaotic. And while the Ministry scrambled to have the devil destroyed and to conceal the truth from the Muggles, Voldemort was free to advance his goals as he pleased. It was a nightmare." The werewolf shook himself. "What happened, Harry? The Aurors attempted to question your cousin, but he was most… uncooperative."

"No surprise there," muttered Harry under his breath. Uncooperative involving Dudley and wizards probably meant the fat lard stood there holding his bum and yelling about freaks. Pausing a moment to reflect, he described the events leading up to the attack and the attack itself, unable to resist going into blow-by-blow detail. This caused his favorite professor to smile, however faintly, and he interrupted only once to inform him of the scythe demons' proper names.

"I must say," Lupin said mildly, after he finished, "that you were very, very lucky. The larger demon – Sangreus, you called him – sounds like the descriptions of a blood-based demon known as an Abyss, though I hadn't thought they were as large in stature or as powerful…" He sighed, swirling his cup, the contents of which had long gone cold. "But you're alive, and that's what matters. I have your knife at the place I'm staying; I'll give it to you once you are released, as I don't believe Healer Prynne would approve."

"But what about you?" asked Harry, the question having simmered in his mind for a while. "How'd you know to come? It's not like Dudley would have sent an owl."

The former professor was quiet for a moment, watching Harry thoughtfully. Just when he began to think his question wasn't going to be answered, Lupin gave his wand a peculiar twist, and the spell made his flesh tingle as it snapped into place. Harry guessed it must be some form of privacy ward, because afterward he spoke without hesitation.

"There are several answers to that. Firstly, your use of so many combat-class spells in succession. This automatically designated the dispatch of one of the department of magical law enforcement's Hit Wizards to your location. Secondly, your cousin, fleeing the attack, happened to run into Arabella Figg, a Squib contact of Dumbledore's who lives on the same street. She immediately Floo-called Albus and the Auror office, reporting a demon attack." Lupin paused. "There was an uproar. There hasn't been a major demon assault since the fall of Voldemort. Many of them wanted to wait until the Hit Wizard returned with a preliminary report, for all the good that would have done… but Tonks and Kingsley – Aurors, you'll meet them later – volunteered to go. Sirius wanted to go, too, but I stunned him and went instead. It's lucky we did, as well," the werewolf added. "If we'd been a half a minute later, Dudley Dursley would be down one soul."

"Dementors." Harry shuddered minutely at the thought. He didn't react well to dementors in the best of situations; dealing with dementors in addition to fighting off Sangreus was the kind of thing he hoped never happened.

Lupin nodded again. "Two of them. We drove them off. Tonks helped him back to your house, while Kingsley and I went after the demons. There were enough of them that Hit Wizard Thompson was overrun; he's still in critical care, though he's expected to make it. By the time we dealt with them, Sangreus was defeated."

 _Just how many demons were there? If one spell is one kill…_

"What happens now?" Harry asked instead. "I'm not going back to the Dursleys, am I?" They would be royally pissed that Duddikins got hurt because of him, something he had no interest in dealing with. "From their letters, it sounded like Ron and Hermione were in the same place…"

"They are." A strange look passed over Lupin's face, before he smiled again. "I'm afraid they might wish otherwise, with all the cleaning Molly's put them up to." Again he stalled Harry's inquiry. "I can't tell you where they are, but it's not the Burrow. Albus will probably have you moved there after you're released, so be patient. If there's one positive to this mess, it's that. Sirius and I had begun to think Albus intended to leave you at Privet Drive all summer."

"I'd've gone nutters if that happened," said Harry with disgust. "Between all that tripe in the Prophet and Ron and Hermione being all secretive… did you know I had to sneak to listen to the Muggle news? Nothing there, either. What's Voldemort up to?"

A knock on the door prevented any response Lupin might have made. The werewolf instead did a reverse twist with his wand, canceling his earlier spell, and called for the visitor to come in.

Whoever Harry might've expected to visit him, this was not it. He didn't recognize the woman, and she definitely lacked the look of a Healer. Short and squat, her eyes bulged under a head of extremely curly mousey brown hair and she had a large square jaw. In other words, the witch looked like the spawn of an interspecies relationship between a human and a very large toad. To add insult to injury, she wore robes of garish yellow and a yellow bow in her hair, creating an eyesore Gilderoy Lockhart would be hard-pressed to match.

By the bed, Lupin stiffened. The witch eyed him, a shadow of a sneer forming on the overlarge mouth, but otherwise ignored him to focus on Harry.

"Harry Potter. I should offer my congratulations on your quick recovery," said the woman sweetly, with a smile that reminded him of a snake. The voice took him off-guard; going by the appearance, he half-expected her to croak, but it was instead high-pitched and breathy like a young girl's.

 _You should, huh. But you didn't._

Harry's eyebrows jumped, and he studied the toad witch again more severely. The feeling that the woman would have been happier if he hadn't recovered at all strengthened. "Who is she?" he asked, directing the question toward Lupin.

"Oh, my apologies. My name is Dolores Umbridge," said the woman in her sugary tone, not giving the werewolf the chance to speak. "Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Cornelius wished for me to speak with you about these outrageous tales that have been spreading."

 _Sweet like poisoned honey_ , Harry decided. Even if she hadn't had the most revolting appearance of any witch Harry had ever met, this Umbridge simply rubbed him wrong. Imaginary hackles rose. He repeated, in the quiet even tone his friends would've known as a warning sign, "Outrageous tales, Madam Umbridge?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter, outrageous tales. Tales like that You-Know-Who may have returned, what with demons reappearing. Amazing, isn't it, the wild conclusions people will jump to!" Umbridge erupted into giggles, as though she had just told an amazing joke. Harry merely stared at her until she stopped, the mask of false geniality falling away. "Do you take the Minister for a fool, Potter? What are the chances that, only a month after you and that fool Dumbledore tried to claim that You-Know-Who returned, the first demon incursion in over a decade occurs practically in your backyard?"

"Pretty high, I'd think," replied Harry, nonplussed. "If Voldemort uses demons and Voldemort wants to kill me, it seems logical that Voldemort might use demons to try and kill me." This was more than willful ignorance; this was willful, determined stupidity. And if the nasty look on Umbridge's already nasty face was any indication… "Just what are you trying to accuse me of?"

 _And why do I have the feeling I already know?_

"Accusing, Mr. Potter? I am accusing no one of anything. That would be slander," Umbridge said. Poisoned honey? Try basilisk venom. "I'm only pointing out a few curious coincidences."

"Right," Harry drawled, stifling the desire to snap at the woman only due to the deadly serious look on Lupin's face as he watched them. "A few curious coincidences Fudge'll make sure the Daily Prophet blows out of proportion in tomorrow's issue?"

Umbridge seemed to swell with anger, startling Harry, who had been under the impression only Uncle Vernon could pull that particular trick. "You arrogant boy. It's not enough for you to spread malicious lies to try and destabilize the Ministry. You have to slander the Minister himself! Well, this is his warning, Potter. You've escaped the consequences of your actions this time, but if you try and mess around with demons again, the Ministry will see to it that you never breathe the free air the outside of Azkaban again."

The witch punctuated this with a huffing noise, and stomped out with her nose in the air.

"They're accusing me of summoning demons?" Harry snarled after the door shut. "They're going to convince the Wizarding world that not only am I delusional, I'm a suicidal nutjob. It's a good thing Sangreus isn't here. I'd have thrown him at her."

"And I would have cheered," said Lupin, sighing as he went limp in his chair. "Harry, you need to be careful around that woman. She's one of Fudge's favorites with a large amount of political pull, and chances are she'll be your Defense professor this year at Hogwarts."

" _What_?"

* * *

Though thankful to be free of the Dursleys, Harry eyed the dark, nearly gothic décor of number twelve, Grimmauld Place's apparation room with no small measure of dubiousness. The walls of the windowless room were done in a worn, faded dark wood and hung with portraits of sneering old wizards in grand if outdated robes. The carpet was short and wiry and done in heavy crimson, and a curious smell tainted the air.

 _This is Sirius' house? Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix?_

In the doorway, Sirius himself stood, a wry half-smirk on his face indicating he knew exactly what was running through Harry's mind at the moment. The wizard gave him a mocking bow, saying dramatically, "Harry. Remus. It is a pleasure to welcome you to the ancient and most noble House of Black."

"The pleasure's all mine," Harry rejoined, meeting sarcasm with sarcasm and provoking a laugh like a bark when he added, "I can definitely tell the house is ancient, but noble I'm not sure of."

"Harry's got this place pegged already, Padfoot," said Lupin with a smile, releasing the arm he used to Side-Along Apparate.

"That's my godson. He's sharp." Suddenly the cheerful façade cracked, and Sirius watched Harry with hooded, haunted eyes. "The Order's meeting up soon downstairs, Remus. Can you fill me in later? If I see Albus or Mundungus I think I'll commit murder."

Lupin's expression similarly fell. "You do remember-"

"Yeah, yeah," Sirius cut in, tone sour. "No spilling Order secrets. Even if he has the right to know. Even if I'm his bloody godfather, and that means Harry's supposed to come before everything else…"

"Sirius…" The werewolf winced but acquiesced. Nodding to Harry and offering him a tired smile, Lupin left the room and the sudden tension.

"Order secrets?" said Harry, studying the man in the doorway.

His godfather had cleaned up a bit, straightening out the matted tangle of his hair and giving it a trim, but at that moment Sirius looked more like the Azkaban escapee than he had as a man on the run last year, when he was unclean, unwashed, and living off of rats. It showed particularly when he smiled; the expression served to make him look even grimmer.

"I can't tell you. Even if there isn't a single damn meeting that goes by without you being mentioned. Even if Dumbledore's being a twiddling moron. Even if you nearly died." Sirius' eyes darkened, clearly expressing his feelings on the matter. "I'm your godfather, Harry, and that means it's my duty to protect you. And if I can't do it myself, I'll make sure you can." He made a 'follow me' motion, and Harry did so. "Tell me about this demon attack. Remus'll brief the Order on it, but I'd rather have it directly from you."

Sirius seemed, for one of the first times since Harry knew him, genuinely serious, so he raised no objection before beginning the story. For the older wizard's part, he listened intently, pausing only to duck into a side room and return with Sangreus in hand. Harry took it, imitating the demon's attack on his wand hand as he traced his godfather's steps upstairs.

"Off-hand dueling?" he repeated, nodding at Harry's mention. They reached a bricked-in archway. Sirius dragged his wand down it, and the bricks seemed to shimmer, before they disappeared altogether. "That's a good idea. We covered that in Auror training, but by that point, most wizards are so used to only using their main hand they can only pick up the basics… here. Your hand, Harry." He drew a pattern on Harry's palm in lines of glittering green magic and pressed it against the now-invisible wall. For a second, his skin grew uncomfortably warm, before it faded and the hand was released. Sirius looked satisfied. "Molly will put you to cleaning the moment she finds you, so this is your best bet. It's not as though the Ministry can trace magic here, with the Fidelius… I figured when Ron, Hermione and Ginny were brought here, they meant to give you some Defense training, but no, clean up duty. Granted, the place needs it. Kreacher's worse than useless."

 _Kreacher_? Harry meant to ask, but it went unvoiced as he saw the room Sirius admitted him into. Expansive as the Great Hall, its dark walls shone faintly with the magenta aura that spoke of an ingrained _Spongify_ enchantment and the floor a subtle blue-violet that Harry didn't recognize. At one end there was an open cabinet, like a bookshelf, piled with phials of an unfamiliar orange potion. At the other end there was a small area cordoned off by a stone rise, with a medicine cabinet and another archway. The view beyond was obscured by a deflection ward.

"Dueling range," said Sirius, with a wolfish grin at Harry's expression. "And training facilities."

"First the Firebolt, now this?" Harry grinned back at him. "Sirius, you really do give the best presents."

The older wizard smirked at him. "Yeah. I keep trying to top your existence. Lily and James did always blame you on me, for some reason. Said that was why they named me godfather instead of someone responsible, like Remus." After that somewhat disturbing comment, he went back to the matter at hand. "Over that way you have the emergency medical supplies and the library. You don't have to worry about anyone coming in that way; the main library entrance is sealed off, too. And on this side, you have some of my family's specialty training tools. Insane bastards they might've been, but they were smart, insane bastards."

It had to be something good, to put a note of grudging respect in his family-rebel godfather's voice. Harry moved toward the shelf, now noticing a solid deflection ward over it as well, and picked out a phial. The potion within was very thick and viscous, like honey, and when he pulled the stopper a heavy but scentless yellowish smoke escaped, making Harry feel light-headed.

"Black family special Doppelganger Draft," Sirius explained. "The regular stuff is virtually useless. Limp, lifeless thing can't even give you an alibi, since both the Aurors and Hit Wizards can identify the potion residue. But this stuff-" He pointed to it and smirked. "It's different."

Harry gazed the liquid dubiously. The Doppelganger Draft he knew of was taken orally, but it didn't have the consistency of old molasses, either. The idea of drinking this… yuck. "How so?"

"You feel up to a duel?" his godfather asked instead of answering. Harry nodded. "Then knock it back and you'll see. Be on your guard though. It won't take long to get its bearings. I'll step in if things get hairy, but I want to watch."

 _It?_ Harry would have asked, but Sirius disappeared with a crack, reappearing on the other side of the range. He shrugged it off, rolled his wand to a comfortable position in his off hand, cast the potion one last look, and tipped it into his mouth. As it touched his tongue, he shuddered at the cloyingly sickening sweet taste but kept drinking. The empty bottle slipped from his nerveless fingers and the room spun in circles – and suddenly it was like he was coated in slime and sweating, until something heavy hit the floor and he snapped back to full awareness. Harry jerked around, wand at the ready and fist clenched around Sangreus' hilt.

 _For a doppelganger_ , Harry thought, _it looks nothing like me_.

This wasn't quite true. It was a human figure, with black robes over a too-large shirt and trousers. The eyes that blinked away the fog of disorientation were almond-shaped and thickly-lashed, but that was where the similarities ended; the doppelganger existed in a grayscale, with skin a chalky white, traced with lines of fine gray for veins and notable scar tissue. What should have been startling green was a depthless near-black, which stood out as especially prominent under a shock of snowy white hair. Tame white hair, no less.

 _What the hell?_

The doppelganger's eyes fixed on Harry. It shot to its feet, gripping weapons that mirrored his own: ashy petrified wand in the right, cold infernal steel in the left. It didn't seem inclined to attempt off-hand dueling like Harry himself, and started the fight with a wicked bludgeoning curse. Harry dodged aside, slashing his wand down to send a cutting curse rocketing back; the doppelganger cast a shield charm in time to deflect the cutting curse, but the bludgeoning spell, ricocheting off of the potion shelf's deflection ward, shattered the shield like nothing and sent it flying onto the range with an indistinct snarl of pain.

Harry dashed after it, stumbling a bit as the range decided to shift in front of his eyes. Where had before been an expanse of smooth, bare stone became a grassy clearing ringed by towering monoliths of rock, like a smaller Stonehenge. At the edges of his vision Harry noticed a slight aura of blue-violet, and realized this must be the floor enchantment at work. He grinned.

Meanwhile the doppelganger regained its feet. Swish, swish, slash – Harry was casting a water spell even as the doppelganger finished its incendiary charm, and the spells canceled in midair. Harry followed immediately with a volley of stabbing hexes and a percussion curse, all blocked or avoided. That was fine, as the doppelganger was too busy to counterattack and he had time to work around one of the standing stones. A reductor curse shattered it into a mélange of different-sized fragments, and a banishing charm, paired with a wind spell for added impetus, sent them barreling toward the potion-beast.

It was gratifying that the doppelganger actually flinched, before it jumped back for some extra distance and made a strangled noise. A reductor curse of its own erupted from its petrified wand, turning most of the stone fragments to dust; the few remainders left small scrapes all over the pale face that leaked sluggish slate-gray blood. The doppelganger snarled angrily, whipped its wand down and around, and the earth rose in rows of lethally sharp spikes.

It took him a second too long to recognize the spell. Smothering a swear word, Harry was put on the defensive, blasting apart some of the spikes and trying to avoid the rest, with limited success. One of the spikes, erupting as he side-stepped another, caught the side of his heel, tearing skin and muscle halfway up his shin and causing him to yell out in pain. The doppelganger laughed in response, tossed its knife up in the air to catch it by the blade, and sent it rocketing his way.

Growling, Harry raised Sangreus, knocking the copy off its path to his face. The next powerful fire spell he countered with a freezing spell, filling the air with steam, and Harry used the cover for another barrage of stabbing hexes, adding the occasional slashing hex and percussion curse for variance but careful to stick to pure effect-impact spells. Then, mimicking the doppelganger, he threw Sangreus with lightning quickness. He wasn't sure where the dexterity, let alone the sure skill came from, but the movements felt familiar and the blade followed an unerring path that ended with a _squelch_ and a choking noise. The wind spell the doppelganger had just been using to clear the air treated Harry to the rather gruesome sight of it grasping vainly at the blade lodged in its throat, gurgling and twitching in its death throes.

The sounds of applause drew his attention from the macabre sight, and the grassy stone circle faded away to reveal the plain stone dueling range with its faint blue-violet spellglow. Harry caught the potion vial Sirius threw him with Seeker's ease and downed it immediately once he identified the mild blue liquid as a Wiggenweld healing draught. The pain in his leg eased, and he tolerated the strange feeling of flesh mending at an exponentially fast rate as his godfather approached.

"Spell-chaining, element cancel, creative usage of the environment, and a decisive end to the bout," Sirius said, ticking points on his fingers. He looked clearly impressed, which gave Harry a warm feeling and made the damage to his leg insignificant. "You've already got the important things down. You need a little more variety in casting, and some stronger element class spells would be good. Maybe some homing spells, too. There was only one problem I could see, and that's mobility." Harry was nodding, having already determined to expand his spell knowledge, but that gave him pause. Seeing this, Sirius explained. "Both the flying stones and the spikes would've been best dodged with a quick Apparation. Wizards don't use teleportation often in duels, because for one, it gets tedious and two, with Apparation warding, it's not good to rely on it. But when there's no other good way to block something, it's useful."

 _Is he implying what I think he's implying?_

Trying not to get his hope up, Harry said, "But I don't know how to Apparate. And I'm underage."

Sirius waved that off. "I don't care. Just be careful who sees you do it." For a second, his cheer failed. "From what you said, if you'd been able to Apparate two days ago, you wouldn't've nearly died. After that, you bet you're going to learn."

* * *

END PT I: DEVIL IN THE ALLEY


	2. dirty laundry

I haven't yet decided solidly on an update schedule for this yet, but every 1-3 days til completion is the working plan. Was going to hold off another day on this part, but I guess I'm just too excited about posting still.

Notes: I find it hilarious how people deride the HP magic system as weak or limited. Some people have no creativity at all... If the HP series were actually action-oriented (clue: it isn't), you might get more of what you see here... To those that wonder, real action (and major plot divergence) will come. We're just getting warmed up.

* * *

Hogwarts was different this year. With the Ministry having thoroughly trashed his name all summer long, this shouldn't have been surprising; even so, Harry hadn't expected how deeply the Ministry's aspersions had rooted in the minds of his own classmates, people who had shared a dorm with him for four whole years. To his bewilderment, Seamus had done everything short of sticking a barrier of crosses around his bed, shooting him darkly suspicious looks all the while. Dean wasn't quite as bad, being Muggle-born, but even Neville acted as though he might be a closet psychotic. From what Hermione said, the girls were even worse. Ginny and one of her yearmates nearly ended up dueling, until Harry told them all he didn't care.

 _Let them be bloody twats now. They'll regret it when Voldemort reveals himself, because I won't forget._

It didn't help that, true to Lupin's prediction, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was none other than the Minister's prized toad Umbridge. It took all of Harry's willpower to keep from rising to her subtle, venomous barbs in class; he wasn't concerned about getting detention, but giving the witch more ammunition with which to target his tattered reputation. She started every lesson with an order of 'Wands away' and set them reams of bookwork, with no intention of studying practical defense at all. Umbridge had even gone so far as to laugh at the idea.

"If you study the theory hard enough, you'll do fine," she insisted, sugary sweet. "It's not as though you're likely to be attacked in my class, are you?" Then she ran her eyes over the students, delaying just long enough on Harry that the small frown seemed to imply 'well, unless _he_ decides to cause trouble…' The students would glance over at him in trepidation; Harry would try to appear unaffected; wash, rinse, repeat. It was maddening.

Harry's frustration found two releases: fighting and flying. In Charms and Transfiguration, he threw himself into practice with bloody-minded determination. In Defense Against the Dark Arts he stared sightlessly at the pages of their useless text, visualizing duels and combos and new spell-chains. He didn't even sleep in History of Magic anymore: perusal of the Black library introduced him to the _extensor_ spellcasting class, and he checked out the Hogwarts library's material as soon as he arrived. In Potions, he gritted his teeth and ignored Snape, concentrating on brewing while secreting away extra ingredients he would use to prepare some of the Black family special Doppelganger Draft.

Then, after classes were over, he hurriedly scrawled his homework assignments for the day and left for his private work until curfew. Surprisingly, neither of his friends complained about this arrangement, as Ron kept sneaking out for his own reason and Hermione demanded to study his essays.

Flying might have been nearly as aggravating as sitting in the common room had Angelina not inherited Wood's Quidditch Captain curse. She came up to Harry in the Great Hall on Monday morning before classes and told him quite flatly that she didn't care if he went around summoning demons as long as he caught the snitch every game.

The memory made him smile as he shouldered his Firebolt on Friday evening after dinner, ready to head down to the Quidditch pitch for Keeper tryouts. The crowd, once he arrived, was modest, but it startled him to see Ron there looking extremely sheepish. The redhead's ears flushed when he felt eyes on him, but Harry merely grinned in his direction and took off. He rose in a tight spiral, pushing the Firebolt to the limits of its speed and maneuverability before he leveled out some three hundred feet above the pitch, doing a few idle loops and dives. There would never be anything like flying, in his opinion; he left Voldemort, Umbridge, and the Ministry on the ground below, small as ants and as insignificant. Nothing could bother Harry in the air.

As Seeker, there was no real need for him to be there. Though Angelina had insisted, she paid him no interest as he swooped around, distracting the people trying out and generally being a pest to the students in the spectator stands. Harry figured that was the real reason for his presence, since a couple broke free of the line and stalked off after the first fly-by. Ron merely shot him a 'you dirty show-off' glance as he mounted for his turn at Keeping, his nervousness succumbing to irritation, and Harry flew off, mission accomplished.

The evening passed quickly, and the shadows of the forest grew long. Harry roused suddenly from his content daze when a strange but familiar chill ran up his spine, and he stared around with narrowed eyes. The evening sunset painted the pitch in hues of crimson light and inky black darkness; it was difficult enough to tell which of the grounded attempters was which. He could make out nothing else. But the hair on the back of Harry's neck stood up. It was almost like…

 _Oh bloody hell!_

On the ground, scarlet haze turned to dark, vaguely human shapes. Hell Prides, Harry guessed, ripping his wand from its sheath on his left arm, and angled the Firebolt into a dive. It turned to a barrel roll a second later at a near-silent flutter of wings behind him. Harry lashed out instantly with a slashing hex at the glutinous red gargoyle demon and executed a tight vertical loop that evaded an assault from another blood-goyle and brought him horizontal just in time for the two pieces of the first demon to coagulate into two new blood-goyles.

"Note to self," Harry muttered with some disgust. "Never try a _Reducto_ with these buggers…" He gave his wand a peculiar jerk, and then snapped his wrist sharply. Following this with the standard tri-loop and ending jab, he intoned, " _Aquafrio Flagulatus_!" Blue-white magic poured from the wandtip, forming a whip measuring easily seven feet in length. It flashed through the air with lethal precision, stabbing the nearest blood-goyle through its center. To Harry's surprise, the demon did not become encased in ice but turned to stone that shattered when he pulled the whip free.

 _Whatever works…_

Harry brought the whip around in a loop and did another barrel roll to dodge a blood-goyle charge, attacking at the same time and shattering another demon. The last one was bigger than the others and hung shuddering in the air, pulsating. He bit off an exasperated swearword as it split on its own, whip piercing the empty space between them. The two blood-goyles launched a coordinated attack. He avoided them by dropping a few feet of altitude, and passed his wand to his left hand as he pulled Sangreus from his makeshift spine sheath. Holding the Firebolt steady with his knees, Harry tossed Sangreus with unerring accuracy with one hand as he cracked the whip a final time, shattering a third demon. The fourth jerked and reverted to stone as Sangreus buried itself into the bloody torso, falling like a rock to the far-below ground and taking his knife with it. Harry did a backwards loop and rocketed down after it, the _extensor_ freezing spell stretching out behind like a tail.

The screams grew louder and clearer as he descended, shadowed figures resolving into robed students attempting to flee from cloaked Hells. Most of them were Prides, like he imagined, but he saw the occasional maroon of a Hell Lust, and in the center of a great knot of demons was another he didn't recognize hauling something that resembled a coffin. There were far more demons than Harry expected by the earlier haze of red smoke, and the feeble defense didn't help. In his experience, a simple reductor curse took a Hell out, but that, apparently, was too much to ask.

 _If you can't run and you can't hide, you have to fight._

The few students counterattacking concentrated around a circle of injured. Unsurprisingly, Ron was among them. Harry smirked when he saw the distinctive red hair.

He overtook the falling statue and leveled out twenty feet below it, swishing the whip into a horizontal line of magic before releasing it with a muttered countercharm. The weakened Freezing spell swept downward to the pitch, covering all it touched with a thin coat of ice. Harry darted to the statue, seizing Sangreus' hilt as it came past and twisted it free, shattering the last of the blood-goyles in the process. Finally, he rocketed over to the defenders, swooping over their heads to deliver a barrage of reductor curses to the front row of demons. Energized, the defenders redoubled their spellcasting.

 _Wait, red spell-glow?_ Harry nearly fell out of the air. _"_ Stop using stunning spells, you idiots! Blast them! They're trying to kill you!"

"Harry!" Ron yelled back at him, tearing his attention away from the battle. "Get the one with the coffin – it keeps summoning more!" The redhead refocused just in time to see a Pride vanish to dust, its scythe directly overhead and Sangreus protruding from its forehead like a macabre horn.

Summoning the knife back in hand, Harry pulled up into a spiral, out of range of even the more agile Lusts. If the coffin-carrier was summoning friends, Ron was right: it definitely needed to go first. That explained the exorbitant number of demons, too, and if the energy that just began circling the pitch was any indication…. Harry smiled grimly, flattening himself to the broom handle for top speed, and splattered the demon with a well-timed _Reducto_ fly-by. It wasn't quick enough to cancel the summoning, however, and he ascended further to get breathing room from the half-dozen extra blood-goyles that appeared.

Jerk-snap, five loops like a rounded star, jab, and _concentrate_ , because he had yet to fully master the base spell alone. Harry roared, " _Ignis Infernus Flagulatus_!" Fire poured from the wandtip, a deep vibrant black that drank in the light. It crackled and sizzled in the evening air. It was times like this that made Harry grateful that spells were guided more by intent than anything else, because otherwise he wouldn't dare cast a fire spell while flying on a broom. He didn't think Firebolt was meant to be that literal.

Harry managed to smirk before the blood-goyles were on him, and then he was wheeling away, descending until he hovered little more than a few feet over the grounded demons' heads. The blood-goyles followed. Manipulating the whip carefully, Harry speared the closest airborne demon and shattered it with a downward yank that brought the stream of fire burning through several Hells below. He repeated the maneuver with two more blood-goyles before he had to break away to avoid a Hell Lust's vertical lunge. Harry recalled the sensation of a Lust's sickle sinking into his stomach, and a vicious satisfaction filled him when he split the demon with fire.

This left him open to a blood-goyle charge, but Harry executed a lazy barrel roll and destroyed the demon unwise enough to try. The last two acted more intelligently and attempted to search for easier targets. Harry circled around, preventing escape, and tore them apart.

With all the aerial threats neutralized, Harry could have flown around and casually massacred the demons from out of range. He decided against it when another Hell, alight with a nimbus of purple, leapt up and nearly took the Firebolt's tail off. Harry fed it the released Burning curse and flew off, landing slightly away and Banishing the broom to the lockers before launching himself at the horde.

The demons swarmed him immediately. Harry blew one to bits with a reductor curse, buried Sangreus in the face of one and tore it out to block the scythe of another, which he bisected with a slashing hex. But too many were getting too close, too fast. He ducked under a sickle long enough to send a quake hex at the ground. Though he lost footing as well, the time was enough to conjure and release an _extensor_ knockback jinx, and he was on his feet long before the Hells got back up. This called for a change of tactics. Gritting his teeth, Harry ghosted Sangreus' edge across his upper arm, and the knife shone a dark crimson. His wand came up, tip aglow with a shimmering magic shield.

Scythes ricocheted off the shield and Sangreus came up for a single strike on each before Harry would duck away to engage a different enemy, leaving the first howling in demonic agony as it crumpled to the ground and slowly disintegrated to dust. The strategy was simple but effective, as the wand had a slightly longer range even when shielding and the bloody knife would kill with typically nonfatal strikes; while the reductor curse worked well, blowing off an arm didn't stop a demon and the crowd made it difficult to aim.

 _At least the horde is thinning…._

The thought, once it registered, took Harry off-guard. The horde was thinning far too quickly to be his work alone, and the voices he heard calling incantations were not students anymore. He wheeled around, throwing off a scythe that scraped over his magic shield, sank Sangreus into a wasted demonic torso and yanked, tearing the stomach open. The Pride shrieked and flailed and Harry was already gone when the stink of sizzling flesh rose from the wound. He switched tactics again, dropping the shield and throwing himself into a full-out assault. Sangreus was a blur of bloody metal, and his wand ripped through a chain of spells as quickly as he could incant them.

 _Reducto. Exsectus. Inflamare. Arduro. Aquafrio. Reducto…_

He repeated the combo, and then repeated it again. Then Harry was out of the mass of monsters and pelting past the professors. He jammed Sangreus back in its sheath as he did a roll, coming back up with his wand leveled at the demons. The spell died on his lips, however, because Dumbledore took the initiative. Gouts of burning flame, shining bright and hot as miniature suns, spewed from the headmaster's wand, and in seconds nothing remained on the pitch, not even ash.

Staring wide-eyed, Harry murmured in awe, "What the hell was that?" _I am going to learn that spell somehow…_

"It's called Fiendfyre, Mr. Potter," said McGonagall stiffly, coming up beside him. "It is the most powerful magical fire invocation – as well as the most uncontrollable. I do not want to hear of you attempting to cast it for any reason." The professor eyed him, softening minutely. "The rest of the students have been directed to the hospital wing, and you need to be treated yourself. The headmaster will doubtless be busy attempting to pacify Dolores and the Minister, so I will escort you."

As the adrenaline ebbed, pain washed over him, aches from slight scrapes and scratches Harry only now noticed having received. More than that he felt tired, and he expected to be sore later. Harry nodded in acquiescence, but he filed away the information McGonagall divulged nonetheless, with full intent to pursue it at some point.

* * *

The weekend proved constructive. Ron took the Keeper position, Sirius identified the coffin-carrier demon with the help of the Black library, and Harry found plenty of time and a spare classroom in the mostly disused south wing to start brewing the Doppelganger Draft. The next Monday, Harry walked into Defense intending to do exactly as he had the previous week: namely, stare blindly at the assigned text while mentally attempting to regurgitate everything he read earlier in History of Magic.

On the first day, Umbridge had taken it upon herself to assign their seating – the reason he didn't simply bring in a different book charmed to resemble _Defensive Magical Theory_ – so Harry proceeded to the front of the class. He parked himself in the seat directly across from Umbridge's desk, shuffling around his bag to keep from having to look at the ministry witch until her rote greeting.

"Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge," Harry droned with the rest of class, opening the useless brick of an assigned text to the next chapter. Anytime now…

"Wands away please," cooed the squat witch. Her wide smile emphasized her already toad-like features, and the sweet venom of her tone soured the air. "Books away too, dearies. You won't need them today."

 _Just like always – wait, what?_

The whole class stared up at Umbridge in surprise. Wands away _and_ books away? What were they supposed to be doing? Some of the Gryffindors started to look hopeful, but Harry saw something rancid behind the professor's eyes and his guard shot up. Whatever she planned, he doubted he would enjoy.

"In light of recent events, I have decided to detour from our syllabus for a lesson or two. Britain can't have its best and brightest upcoming minds completely unaware of the most dangerous enemy faced by magical and Muggle alike." The class was for once hanging off of Umbridge's every word, and she appeared to relish the attention. Harry knew exactly what was coming, and remembering her unspoken vow to frame him for the Privet attack, felt his stomach sink like a stone. "I speak, of course, of demons. As all of you are aware, the recent attack on Hogwarts is the second major demon incursion reported since the fall of You-Know-Who fourteen years ago."

With some hesitation, Hermione put up her hand. Umbridge acknowledged her with a nod. "Professor Umbridge, does this mean you'll be teaching us some anti-demon defense spells?"

The question caused Umbridge to laugh. The high, obnoxiously girly sound grated on Harry's jangling nerves. "Oh, Miss Granger. As I've said before, this is a theory class. Ordinarily this subject wouldn't even be taught. It's only because of these extraordinary circumstances that we're discussing it at all!"

The witch rose from her seat, sweeping the class with an imperious gaze. Harry felt the weight of eyes on his back and fought the urge to stiffen and let on that he was bothered. Usually this would make Umbridge scowl, however small the scowl might be, but this time the toad-like witch merely smiled yet more widely as she sauntered over to the board. She waved her stubby little wand across it, and a header appeared:

 _DEMONS AND THE WIZARDING WORLD: INTERACTION AND CONFLICT_

Umbridge turned to face the class. "I think we should start with a few questions… First, do any of you know the name of the last British wizard known to summon demons? Thomas?"

Dean jumped at the direct address. He peered around with the desperation of a student put on the spot until he realized he actually did know the answer, and then looked at Umbridge askance. "Er… You-Know-Who, professor?"

"A common misconception, but nonetheless incorrect," she replied lightly, garnering a host of confused stares. "While You-Know-Who was infamous for his use of demons to keep the Ministry's forces occupied, the tactic he used was indirect: forced interplanar breaching. He was never known to actively summon and deal with them."

The class murmured. Umbridge smiled, and Harry narrowed his eyes. As strange as it sounded, he thought it was probably the truth. Voldemort wasn't dumb enough to make a deal with a devil and then betray it, and he didn't share power. But what did the distinction matter? Voldemort may not have dealt with them, but demons were still a threat.

 _Unless they're trying to say the demons that attacked the pitch were figments of our imagination._

He smothered a snort. Even Fudge wasn't that stupid.

Unfortunately, Umbridge caught the fleeting expression. "Do you find this amusing Mr. Potter?" she asked slyly. "Perhaps demons simply don't concern you as much as the normal wizard. I hear you were right in the thick of the attack on Friday. Fitting, considering what your great-grandfather got into."

 _What?_

"Tiberius Potter. The last known British wizard to deal actively with demon-kind." Umbridge tapped the board with her wand, and the words appeared there. Harry gazed at them fixedly, anger rising in his chest as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He could imagine the entire class staring daggers into his back, like this just confirmed his guilt – just as the ministry wanted. The toady gave him a look of studied concern. "You were aware of this, I hope? It is a matter of public record."

"Actually, no," Harry admitted, feigning nonchalance. Umbridge knew she'd caught him off-guard with that one. Lying would accomplish nothing more than to give the toad-witch additional satisfaction. "I suppose it's not surprising though. Go far enough back, and you see stuff like that in every pureblood family's history." Sirius had warned him about that, at least, so maybe he should have been expecting it.

"Of course," said Umbridge sweetly, with an unmistakable undertone of pacification. Great, now he sounded defensive. The moment he got out of here, Harry was going to hex something, and he was going to hex it so hard there would nothing left to hex a second time.

Class continued. The ministry witch, to her pleasure, had discovered a soft spot she was free to gouge under the guise of historical interest. Insults to himself Harry could shake off unfazed, but his family was another matter. Harry hid his hands under the desk because they were clenched so hard the knuckles turned white, and by the time the three-hour double period was up, he felt certain his teeth had ground to nothing. He wanted to shout every time a drop of oblique poison rolled off Umbridge's honeyed tongue, but he remembered Lupin and Sirius both warning him to tread lightly and swallowed it.

Once the bell rang to end classes, Harry uncurled his fists and packed his book away with trembling hands and careful, deliberate slowness. The rest of the Gryffindors muttered amongst themselves, pinning his back with narrowed glances as they filed out the door. He ignored them and joined Ron and Hermione.

 _I've managed this long. I can't explode now._

"We won't be going to dinner, will we?" asked Ron in undertone, seeing his face.

Harry shrugged with great care. "You can. I'm not hungry."

"We're not leaving you alone like this," Hermione said sharply, and a little too loudly, as they stepped out of the classroom. "If we do, we won't see you again until tomorrow unless we resort to a tracking spell-"

"Yeah, Granger, and we can't let chronic demon summoners get out by themselves, can we?" Seamus interjected, stopping Hermione in her tracks. The Irish wizard, flanked on one side by Neville and Lavender and on the other by a nervous-looking Dean, turned his attention to Harry. "It wouldn't be a big surprise if something bad happened to Umbridge if we did. You didn't like her airing out your family's dirty laundry, did you Potter?"

"Shut up." Harry's hand found its way to his wand without him thinking about it, but he merely clenched his fist around it. The wood felt hot as a firebrand against his skin. His fingers tingled. Ron's hands dug into the back of his robes, keeping him from leaping at Seamus, while Hermione put her hands on her hips, furious.

"And the last Black is your godfather," Neville spoke up, sounding almost betrayed. There was a wounded, distant look in his eyes. "Crazy demon-obsessed bastards, the lot of them. The only thing they're good for is to make people suffer. Getting your jollies and letting other people pay."

 _Is he comparing me to-?_ "I said," Harry repeated, half a snarl, "Shut. Up."

"Know what I heard?" Seamus added, apparently feeling some Gryffindor righteous victory in the face of riling him up so badly. "I heard that the demons that attacked you this summer were actually after your Muggle relatives. We all know you don't like them. Tried to get rid of them, didn't you, but your blood still stinks the same-"

The suit of armor behind Seamus exploded into myriad fragments of metallic dust. Seamus promptly lost his voice, pressing a hand to the ear that was just barely singed by the reductor curse's violet spellglow, and Harry lowered his wand slightly and slowly, shaking.

"Oh my, what do we have here?" Umbridge had appeared in the threshold of her classroom, and the eyes the widened in dramatic alarm held a distinct glint of vicious accomplishment. "Magic in the halls, threatening other students? Mr. Potter, put that wand away immediately, and I'll see you tonight in detention at five o'clock. Is there anything else you would like to say to Mr. Finnegan?"

Harry knew he was supposed to apologize. Hermione's eyes begged him to go along with it so he didn't get in even more trouble. He looked up at Seamus with glittering green eyes, feeling hot all over.

"Yes I do, Professor," he said snidely. "The next time someone who's bloody pissed tells you to shut up, Finnegan, you should try and take his advice. The next person might have better aim."

Ignoring Umbridge's scandalized deduction of twenty points from Gryffindor, Harry stalked off.

It was over twenty minutes later, after Harry systematically destroyed everything in the room, that he heard the door creak and admit his friends. The invisibility cloak fell away to reveal Ron holding the Marauder's Map in hand and Hermione clutching a platter of food, probably nicked from the kitchens, both of them gaping at the destruction. Harry ignored them for a second, drawing his wand away from his temple with a look of intense concentration; a thin rope of gleaming black followed the tip, breaking away when Harry jerked his wrist. He dropped it into the small cauldron at his feet and gave the simmering potion a stir, nodding as a yellowish haze rose from it. Harry opened the cupboard, long since bereft of the extra textbooks it was meant to hold, relit the bluebell flames within, and put the cauldron back on the heat before closing and sealing the cupboard with a spell.

"What was that?" asked Hermione, choosing not to comment on the state of the room. She repaired a desk with a swish of her wand and a muttered incantation, and uncovered the platter. The smell of food flooded the room. "You'll have to transfigure your own utensils. The house elves wouldn't give me any."

"Probably figured they wouldn't get it back," Ron muttered, staring around and shaking his head. He blanked the map, shoved it in a pocket and stole a drumstick from the platter, not bothered with a plate. "Man, the bitch really got to you didn't she?"

"Yeah," Harry admitted, and his stomach growled. So many Blasting Curses in succession did wonders for his appetite. He transfigured a plate from a splintered chair backing and piled it full of food as he answered Hermione's question. "It's a potion Sirius showed me over the summer, a modified Doppelganger Draft. The Blacks used it for dueling practice."

Ron startled, choking on his mouthful of chicken. "You're kidding, right? I've heard of that potion. They say it's half the reason the Blacks are all insane!"

"That's my godfather you're calling insane," said Harry, somewhat testily – because even Sirius would admit his friend had a point. He sighed. "Sirius did say it's the reason that Blacks always have twins. He actually was one."

"That's not true." Hermione scowled thoughtfully. "We saw the Black family tapestry when we were cleaning this summer, and the only sibling Sirius had was a brother a couple years younger."

"They always have twins, but one's always stillborn." It was Ron who said that, and he looked disturbed. "And since pureblood families are so interrelated, it's the same for almost all magical twins. Why do you think Fred and George get away with so much? They're the first set of wizarding twins in over a century not to try and kill each other."

Hermione stared from Ron to Harry, appalled. "You're serious, aren't you? That is absolutely horrid! And Sirius told you to use it as a training tool? What is he thinking?"

"I dunno. Maybe that if I get killed by a demon or a Death Eater, I won't be having kids anyway?" That effectively killed the Muggle-born witch's momentum, and Harry wolfed down his plate in the moment of peace. "The way Umbridge talked, you would think there's no way a wizard could take down more than a couple demons, let alone a devil like Sangreus." He trailed off, a thought striking him.

 _I wonder what Seamus would've done if I'd thrown Sangreus instead of a hex?_

"Yeah, and she's full of shit," said Ron. He waved off Hermione's remonstration about his language. "Bill wanted to be a demon hunter until he got in with Gringotts and started cursebreaking. It's the reason Mum doesn't complain about how dangerous it is. Devil hunting'd be bloody wicked, but you have to be the best of the best." He grinned. "Hey Harry, want to go hunt demons after Hogwarts? We can kick arse and take names and the Ministry can go piss in the wind."

"Sounds good to me, Ron," replied Harry with an answering smile. "I wouldn't work for the Ministry after this summer anyway."

"And I suppose I'll be the backup and support?" Hermione eyed them with amused exasperation. "I should start researching demon breeds, then, and healing magic, since I don't trust either of you to see a Healer."

 _Actually, this could work…_

"You should look up light invocation instead," Harry suggested, cleaning the crumbs from his makeshift plate and allowing it to change back to the chair fragment. "The Black library's probably the largest demon resource in the world, and Sirius has it covered."

The witch blinked at this, perhaps taken aback to be answered seriously, but nodded thoughtfully. "Light magic is magic designed for dark creature combat, isn't it? Tonks mentioned learning the Soulfire invocation in her Auror studies. It's supposed to be abominably difficult to learn, but with enough effort…" She brightened. "If we could demonstrate mastery of a light invocation on our Defense O.W.L., just think of the extra credit we could earn!"

Harry and Ron stifled twin snorts.

 _At least she's sold on the idea now…_

Harry was still mentally patting himself on the back when the witch's face fell, but it caught his attention immediately. "What's wrong, Hermione?"

"All the extra credit in the world won't help us if we can't perform any of the spells on the exam itself," she said angrily. "These exams determine what jobs we're eligible for. Umbridge is going to ruin the futures of our entire year with her stubborn emphasis on theory only. If only we had someone to teach us!"

"Harry could probably pass with an O now," said Ron, and both of them gave him inquiring glances.

"I'll teach you two, if you want." Harry met Hermione's eyes with a scowl. "But no one else. Don't even ask. I'm not wasting my time on people that think I'm criminally insane."

 _I'm not teaching people who are liable to use what they learn to attack me._

It went unspoken but both of his friends seemed to hear it, since they winced in tandem. They didn't argue.

Time flew by after that, and it seemed like mere minutes before Harry found himself knocking at the door to Umbridge's office. He took a deep breath after he heard her call out for him to enter, holding tightly to his present calm. Then he stepped over the threshold and stopped short. The room was awash in painfully bright pink and wallpapered with revolting display plates that Aunt Petunia would love, if the kitten patterns weren't animate. Harry had seen the Defense professor's office three of the past four years, and he had thought it couldn't get worse than Lockhart's relentless self-portraiture – but this came pretty close.

"Mr. Potter, I do believe I said to come in."

The office was as horrid as Umbridge herself, he decided, and put away his surprise. "What, no Filch? After everything you said at St. Mungo's, I imagined you would have something special planned."

The dry humor rolled right off the Ministry witch. "Oh, but I do. That'll be ten points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter. Now sit down, and take out some parchment. I've supplied you with a quill. You'll be writing lines."

 _Writing lines, for nearly hexing someone's ear off? What the hell?_

Instantly suspicious, Harry moved over to the spare desk and sat wordlessly, shuffling around in his bag for the required parchment. True to her word, there was a quill already there, long and black with the sharpest nib of any quill he knew, but no ink. He shrugged and pulled out an inkwell from his bag.

"What must I write?" he asked. "How many times?"

Umbridge smiled widely at him, and her bulging eyes glittered. "Put the ink away, Potter, you won't need it. You will write, 'I must not tell lies.' And you will write it until I'm satisfied that it's made an impression."

Harry looked back at her with consternation. She showed no signs of going back to her grading as he took up the quill slowly. It felt uncomfortably warm against his fingers as he put nib to parchment and scratched out _I must_ -

"Ouch!" Thin lines of white-hot pain ran through the back of his hand, tracing out the words he had written in gleaming scarlet, before it faded and sealed over. The quill began to heat up; Harry half-glanced back at Umbridge, catching her expression of vicious glee, and ducked back down to write, swearing not to make another sound and mentally preparing himself for a very long night.

 _I must not tell lies._

 _I must not tell lies._

But the quill kept getting hotter, until the burning of his fingers was worse than the needle-sharp but quick and clean incision on the back of his hand. It seemed to grow sluggish, writing only with great difficulty and struggle.

 _I must not te_

Harry threw it down in alarm as the quill released a great plume of smoke and burst into flames after only a few lines. As Umbridge squawked in surprise, he went for his wand, calling out an extinguishing spell before the desk caught fire along with it. It took a few tries before the embers died, leaving behind a small pool of red-black goop. The quill-turned-ash mixed with the blood it used for ink.

"What did you do, Potter?" the toadish witch shouted. "What did you do?"

"I was doing what you told me!" Harry said defensively, staring at the puddle. It reminded him of the monster from Privet Drive – how it had collapsed into a pool of blood to move since the narrow alley kept it from maneuvering properly, how it had burned and sizzled when his blood touched its pulsating flesh… "That's a demonic artifact," he breathed, catching Umbridge's eyes with a blooming incredulous grin. "You're forcing me to use a demonic artifact! I wonder what Dumbledore could do if he knew about that. Kick you out, probably. I should thank you."

 _Pity it was destroyed, or I_ would _tell him. I'd just be called a liar now._

Umbridge's wide face turned puce in anger, but apparently his words got to her enough that she didn't explode and say something he could use against her. Instead the squat witch raised a single trembling stubby finger and pointed at the door.

"Get. Out."

Harry needed no other prompting. He gathered his bag, darted out of the room and headed toward the library, where he knew Ron and Hermione had gone in his absence, getting as far as one corridor away before stopping to release the laughter dying to escape.

 _Best. Detention. Ever._

 _She just can't handle me one-on-one, can she?_

* * *

END PT II: DIRTY LAUNDRY


	3. devils in the details

Notes: A transition chunk. The more things change, the more they change. Those changes are about to become very obvious. And there's a boss! My first original devil. Also, Dante! ...I apologize in advance. Dante is one of those people that is really, really hard to write when not the POV character...

* * *

The first Quidditch game of the year took place the first week of November, as usual pairing Gryffindor versus Slytherin. The anticipation was even greater this year than ever, after the brief scare the teams had got thanks to the Ministry's newest educational decree, and the atmosphere was downright venomous between the two competing Houses.

 _Not like it ever isn't…_

Ron was green with nerves as they headed out to the pitch, and Harry spent the trip attempting to bolster his flagging confidence with little success. He was especially twitchy whenever the Slytherins would look in his direction and smirk, like they had some trump card up their sleeve. Harry felt some concern, knowing the dirty tricks the Slytherins were apt to use, but he was too eager to play to care.

The pitch was still a sight, several weeks after the demon attack during Quidditch practice. Though Sprout worked religiously to return the field to its usual verdant green carpet, there was little improvement to show for her labor. Dumbledore's Fiendfyre spell left a great circle of scorched earth in the midst of the field, and spots of scraggly brown, wilted grass marked places the Hell Greeds had planted their coffins to summon more of their kind. Someone, probably Madam Hooch, had reapplied the missing field lines, and the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams lined up at their places. Angelina and the Slytherin captain Montague stiffly shook hands, Hooch gave the customary warning about playing a clean game, and they were off.

It didn't take long to discover just what the Slytherins were smirking about. Harry flew up in a lazy spiral after determining that the Snitch had disappeared. Malfoy followed after a token search, marking Harry as usual with a wide expectant smirk on his face.

"I couldn't believe it when I heard Gryffindor was desperate enough to take Weasley on as Keeper," the pale boy said snidely, not looking for the Snitch at all. Malfoy instead followed the Chasing action with his eyes, looking up occasionally to make sure Harry hadn't drifted away from him. "The House team is going to the dogs, with even more Weasley trash on it. You must've agreed, Potter, seeing as you had a horde of demons try and put them out of their misery."

 _Probably wants to see if he's getting to me, too._

No doubt to the Slytherin's consternation, he wasn't, at least visibly; ignoring the unsubtle barbs from Umbridge during class and the at-times virulent hostility in the Gryffindor dorms gave Harry a crash course in stoic disregard. But Malfoy was going somewhere, and as one of the Slytherin Chasers escaped down the pitch, Harry heard the Slytherin's stand erupt in song:

"Weasley cannot save a thing/He cannot block a single ring/That's why Slytherins all sing/Weasley is our king!"

Below, Ron froze like a deer in headlights, and the Quaffle flew past him straight into the left goal, without effort. Harry winced.

"Weasley is our king/Weasley is our king/Weasley will make sure we win/Weasley is our king!"

"Like it, Potter?" Malfoy said, smirking in his direction, abandoning all pretense of Snitch-seeking. Harry didn't reply, as Angelina scored took control of the Quaffle and rocketed off down the pitch to the Slytherin hoops. "We wanted to write a few more verses, but we couldn't find words to rhyme with fat and ugly – we wanted to talk about his mother, you see – and we couldn't think of a way to fit in _useless_ _loser_ , either – for his father, you know-"

Angelina scored after some impressive Chasing work, Montague took the Quaffle, and sunk the ball in moments. As the song grew louder, drowning out even the roar of Luna's ridiculous lion hat, Ron flew in the direct opposite direction from Montague's hoop assault. Harry could see the glow of Ron's flush from fifty feet overhead, and he began to get hot himself. If Umbridge weren't watching, surely eager for the chance to throw him off the Gryffindor team, it would feel so good to hex him.

"Weasley was born in a bin/He always lets the Quaffle in/That's why Slytherins all sing/Weasley is our king!"

"You would have a hard time, wouldn't you, Malfoy?" Harry rejoined calmly. "If you were singing about your father you could've said 'the sniveling, ass-licking prat' and rhymed just fine."

"But I hear you like the Weasleys, Potter," the Slytherin continued, shaking off his visible irritation at the barb. "Stay at their house at the holidays and everything. Can't see how you stand the smell, but I suppose after being dragged up by Muggles anything is an improvement. Tried to kill them off, too, didn't you, Potter? I'd congratulate you if the demons hadn't realized you stank just as bad." He leaned over his broom handle, smirking, and spoke in a low tone. "I'm just waiting for the next demon attack. They always seem to crop up around you, don't they? Maybe next time you'll be at that hovel of theirs… doesn't seem likely they'll all survive, does it?"

Harry was just thinking about how startlingly like Seamus Malfoy had begun to sound when he went still. Lupin said Voldemort set demons loose near his enemies. Was Malfoy implying…? Whether he was or he wasn't, Harry was going to teach him a lesson.

 _After all, Quidditch is a rough game. There are perfectly game-legal ways to hurt someone…_

He turned as though to snap a reply back at Malfoy, froze for a telling instant, and then dived. Malfoy panicked, thinking that Harry had seen the Snitch, and took off after him immediately, somehow keeping up despite the Firebolt's greater speed. He kept up, half-blinded by Harry's Quidditch robes, right until Harry pulled a barrel roll and darted aside, not a meter above the blackened earth. The Slytherin, not nearly so skilled a flier, was unable to abort the dive and ploughed directly into the ground at top speed. There was a wet crunch.

Harry hovered over Malfoy long enough to listen to Hooch determine he was alive, but badly injured enough to be removed from the game, and flew off with a smirk on his face as she made the announcement. The Slytherin stands went abruptly silent, and Lee Jordan's usual tactless comment echoed with uncommon loudness in the ensuing quiet.

"Well folks, maybe we Gryffindors should make that ' _Wronski_ is our king.' Harry Potter pulls an amazing Wronski Feint and turns the Slytherin Seeker into a bleeding pancake!"

The Gryffindors let out a ragged cheer and Luna's lion roared, and Harry gave Ron a flyby and a thumbs-up. Ron shot a vicious grin back, clearly rejuvenated and ready to do his job. Now they were going to play, and Slytherin was going to get flattened.

* * *

Harry had a bad feeling the instant Hagrid announced to the class that the lesson was to take place in the Forbidden Forest. Not just because Umbridge was present, ready and eager to tear her Inquisitorial claws into the half-giant, but because Hagrid had apparently not been returned long enough to know why going into the forest was asking for trouble; while it was always dangerous, being nest to a hoard of acromantulas and Merlin knew what else, there was something very wrong with the place now. Grubbly-Plank reported seeing demons skulking about the forest outskirts, and Sprout had the NEWT Herbology class cleaning the demon dust out of her Greater Hydra's many fanged maws for two weeks after some particularly dumb monsters started poking around greenhouse four.

Now they were going into the forest itself, and Harry felt a peculiar mix of anticipation and aggravation that his classmates were gravitating toward him, some watching him severely, others subconsciously betraying their fear. Ron and Hermione flanked him as he followed behind Hagrid, both with a wary hand on their wands, and the rest of the Gryffindors crowded in behind them. The forest was different during the day than his previous experiences during the night; the shadows were not as deep and the trees were greener, and it was overall more friendly – in comparison. It was spite, but Harry smirked when Neville shrank back into Seamus.

Hagrid led them for a quarter of an hour, navigating carefully past the acromantulas' nest and the centaurs' territory to a black hollow blocked from sunlight entirely by the thick canopy of trees, where he dropped the dead cow and made a shriek like a dying bird. He faced his class, clearly puzzled and discomfited by their uncharacteristic silence.

"Now, terday we're coverin' thestrals," he attempted to start. "Can anyone tell me what a thestral is?"

Predictably, Hermione's hand flew straight in the air. Hagrid nodded to her and she began to talk. "Thestrals are a subspecies of winged horses. They are carnivorous scavengers and thought to be quite intelligent, but are considered signs of bad luck, as they can only been seen by someone who has already seen death."

"Twenty points ter Gryffindor," Hagrid awarded with a smile that his bruised condition turned grotesque. He made another call. "Should be here in a bit... 'nother thing ter know about thestrals is they're pretty rare. The Hogwarts herd's the biggest herd in Britain, an' the only tame one."

"Are you sure they're tame?" Malfoy muttered, breaking the silence.

"You've never been bitten boarding the carriages to and from the castle, have you?" said Harry sharply, having put two and two together. He remembered the skeletal horses only he and Luna had seen.

There was a second wherein the class became illuminated. Ron snickered, adding under his breath, "Hermione said they were intelligent, Harry, so why would they want to bite Malfoy?" Harry bit back a smirk; he had a point.

" _Hem hem_."

Umbridge finally decided to supply her input, tapping her clipboard with her quill in a way that made the class peer about nervously at the racket. Did she believe that any monsters in the forest would spare her for being Undersecretary to the Minister? When she spoke, it was both loud and very slow, as though she thought Hagrid would not understand. "You do realize that the Ministry has classified thestrals as 'dangerous'?"

Hagrid was about to chuckle and contest this when a thestral stumbled into sight, collapsing by the dead cow. It echoed Hagrid's call but quietly, almost in panic, and the half-giant knelt over him in worry. Harry exchanged glances with his friends, and as one they drew their wands.

"Inciting fear..." Umbridge faux-whispered, making a note on her board. Hermione shot her a heated look.

Whatever Hagrid seemed to get from his one-sided – or maybe so not one-sided – conversation with the winged horse, it made him grow grim. Hoisting the thestral over his shoulder like the dead cow before, he fixed the class with a look. "There's summat mighty wrong here. Foller me. We got ter go."

He made to lead them back the way they came, but of course, it couldn't be that easy.

The black of the hollow drank in the light from Hagrid's lantern and from the wands the students lit in an effort not to trip. The back of Harry's neck prickled, and he swished his wand down in a nonverbal _Aegis Protectare_ just in time to weather the dark shockwave that threw everyone short of Hagrid to the ground.

"I thought you said these things were tame!"

"That's no thestral," Hagrid growled, reaching behind him. But he didn't have his crossbow.

It resembled a thestral: thin, skeletal, with reptilian accents to its horse body, with a coat of depthless black, and wingspan twice its height. That was where the similarity ended, however. This thing, clearly a demon, was half again larger than the thestral strewn over Hagrid's shoulder and its wings were feathered like a giant bird's instead of being batlike, more like Beauxbaton's Abraxan pegasi. The _lumos_ spell-light went through it like a living shadow, until the spell would fail of its own volition.

Several witches and wizards screamed, having half-risen to look.

 _Oh yeah, and the entire class can see it._

There was a moment of stillness, the devil horse on one side and the class on the other. Harry went over to Hagrid's side, close enough to hear the half-giant's almost subvocal exhale of "a bloody _demon_..." The huge fist clenched and unclenched a bit spastically where the handle of his crossbow should've been, and for the first time since he had been carted off to Azkaban Hagrid actually looked scared.

Harry shot a speaking glance back at Ron and Hermione, who had regained their feet. Ron grinned and Hermione nodded.

"Hagrid, we need to get the students out of here," she said, keeping her wand trained on the still quiescent demon. "Harry and Ron can hold it off."

"Are... are yeh sure?"

A prickle at the back of his neck, and Harry reacted in time to another shockwave of dark energy to cast a deflector shield instead of the aegis; the rebounded attack blasted the demon horse off its hooves and through a tree. It shrieked in rage as it stood up again.

"Done it before," said Harry, not particularly impressed. "Same shit, different devil."

Although he had no way of knowing if Harry was being truthful, Hagrid merely nodded, backing away to join the already departing Hermione. "Jes' hold on. We'll get the other professors here real quick."

"Good luck with that," Ron murmured.

The redhead's statement must have been prophetic, because just then a horde of shapeless shadow figures spawned off the pegasus, gliding after the panicking class. Hermione gave him an acid glare before she dashed off.

 _Shit_. "Go with her, Ron." Harry stepped between the demon and his startled friend. "If anyone dies, Hogwarts is screwed. You can use Soulfire. I can't. Go."

Soulfire, light invocation: it ate at Harry bitterly that while Hermione could manage it and Ron had a special talent for it, he couldn't seem to cast it at all. Ron knew that, which was probably the only reason he went after the Muggle-born without protest. It was their best hope... assuming he didn't set the forest on fire.

Harry drew Sangreus in his other hand, turning his full attention and aggravation on the pegasus. "Come and get me, bitch."

It whinnied a demon-horse laugh and bucked. Its rear hooves slammed against the gnarled yew behind him, and dark energy raced out from both sides in arcs. Harry rolled forward at the last moment and the arcs collided in an explosion of power behind him. As he rose, he recast the aegis shield, and – swish, five loops like a rounded star – a long tongue of soft blue flame poured from his wand's tip, igniting foliage and the immediate circle of trees. The bluebell fire would not burn or spread but filled the hollow with flickering light. Harry needed to see.

The pegasus shrieked, stomping the ground and extinguishing some of the fire. The remaining light fell on sleek black feathers. It drew its wings back, slicing them with lightning quickness through the air. The shield charm collapsed under the barrage of lethally sharp feathers, but it did its job.

 _Just keep showing me your trump cards and you'll make this easy..._

Unhurt, Harry fired a volley of slashing hexes and bludgeoning curses. At this range, elemental and area-of-effect spells were risky, so he relied on his knowledge of more common effect-impact spells to lay down cover fire while he gained distance. It failed to do much damage, but the relentless casting irritated it into rearing. Anticipating the loss of remaining light, Harry recast the _extensor_ bluebell flames in the instant before hooves crashed into his back, tossing him painfully face-first into the gnarled yew. He heard as well as felt his nose break.

His first thought, _what the hell just happened_ , was followed swiftly by, _I just had to get cocky, didn't I..._

The fire whip curled around him, Harry scrubbed the blood from his broken nose onto Sangreus. The infernal steel heated, and the wizard tossed the bluebell flame toward the pegasus. It shot the spell out of the air with its spiny feathers. Taking advantage of the distraction, Harry lobbed his knife at the demon. The blade sunk in to the hilt at the junction of its head and neck.

The pegasus went crazy. Harry knew his blood was working its magic, burning through demonic flesh like acid. It stomped and it bucked, sending waves of dark energy all across the hollow to hammer against the aegis shield. _Caelum_ _praesidium_ would probably work better, as an energy-only shield, but he had yet to manage that one.

Harry took the moment to think. He didn't have the room for anything but effect-impact without endangering himself, and effect-impact spells clearly weren't enough here. The knife was.

His blood was. Just like with Sangreus. It figured.

How to get there? Well, as Hermione would attest, it was impossible to apparate on Hogwarts grounds... but not in the forest. He smiled thinly. Harry was thankful all over again that Sirius had taught him to apparate, because there was no way he would be able to close in otherwise. Never mind Sirius had taught it as a way to _escape_ a conflict...

 _crack_

Harry seized the demon's mane with his wand hand as it wildly attempted to throw him off, leaning forward just enough to grab Sangreus with his free one. Summoning all his strength, he ripped it savagely back through the demon's flesh, eliciting a shriek that reverberated through Harry's skull. Another buck led to the wizard tearing the knife free, and as he tried to bleed but not mutilate himself, the pegasus stomped and vanished into the shadows beneath it, leaving Harry to fall to the ground.

A second later, the pegasus reappeared from a shadow across the hollow. With a shriek and a second volley of razor sharp feathers, the demon-horse turned tail and fled, disappearing into the darkness.

Harry allowed his aegis shield to fail entirely, cursing under his breath. Clearly, he had a lot more training to do, since the demon got away. He gathered the feathers with a careful summoning charm, prodding at one and splitting his thumb for his trouble. He stuck it in his mouth, and turned back the way they'd come, where he could still hear Ron and Hermione calling out spells.

At least he got a consolation prize.

* * *

The attack in the forest by a fully fledged devil did nothing to lift the Ministry's stance of _deny deny deny_ , but it was the final straw for Dumbledore. Since Fudge patently refused to investigate the appearance of so many demons from the Forbidden Forest, the Headmaster dug into his own funds to hire an investigator of his own – because, as he said, he held his duty to the students of Hogwarts far and above any other duty. Whether to himself, his position, or his reputation.

Personally, Harry had faced too many dangerous situations at Hogwarts to believe Dumbledore was completely sincere, but he applauded the effect the declaration had on Fudge. Impressively, the Prophet chose to lambast the Minister's lack of prior decisive action, the Ministry-appointed defense professor's lack of presence whatsoever in any of the demon attacks (particularly the one she was present during), and praise Dumbledore's noble action. Harry himself went unmentioned, which he supposed was the best he could have expected.

At any rate, a strict lockdown was enacted over the castle and grounds following the Care of Magical Creatures class. The faculty tried to keep it under wraps that the pegasus had not been killed, but the instant it got out a rash of glory-seekers, mostly sixth and seventh years, had to be repulsed from the forest lest they get themselves killed.

Harry was summoned to Dumbledore's office only a few days later out of Defense Against the Dark Arts. The message itself requested he bring one of the feathers shed by the demon-horse, so he thought he knew what the meeting was for: Dumbledore's demon hunter was here, and he wanted to know what he was up against. Harry wondered as he made his way to the headmaster's office what the hunter would be like. An image of Bill Weasley wearing dragonhide dueling robes popped into his head, and he shook it off with a half-smirk.

"Fizzing whizbee." The gargoyle leaped aside and Harry ascended the staircase. The door swung open when he stepped onto the landing.

"Ah, Harry, come in!" Dumbledore smiled up at him as he entered, for a fraction of a second meeting his eyes. Then his gaze slid off to the side. "Harry, this is Dante. Dante, Mr. Potter."

"The demon hunter," Harry commented, making no effort to hide his scrutiny. He knew the name: Hermione's research had unearthed it as the demon hunter responsible for the takedown of some major devil back in the first war. They had imagined some grizzled old veteran of the business. From the look of it, they'd been wrong. The only part of Dante that could be taken for old was his hair, a shock of snowy white. Otherwise, Harry found it hard to call him thirty, despite at best having to be a decade older. Tall, built, and clad in a red leather duster, Dante was the picture of laid-back confidence.

 _Oh, and let's not forget the sword._

Bewitching a weapon with the featherlight charm ruined anything not a precision instrument – rather, as Hermione said, an object with vanishingly small mass required an infinitely large acceleration to create an appreciable force – so it couldn't be enchanted. That meant Dante could actively use a weapon that probably weighed as much as Harry himself, which was frankly scary.

This assessment must have shown on his face. Dante smirked slightly, and Dumbledore's eyes though averted showed some amusement.

Harry schooled his expression. Reaching into his bag he pulled out a single wicked feather, whirling it through his fingers. "You wanted this?"

"Ah, yes, if you would," said the headmaster, becoming businesslike. He studied it and nodded. "A cushioning charm, of course. Otherwise by your description it would have cut straight through your bag." And his fingers, but that went unspoken. Dumbledore stripped the spell away with a negligent wave of his wand. He proceeded to mutter and cast some spells of his own on it, consulting a sheet of parchment on his desk on occasion.

Having no idea what Dumbledore was up to, Harry swiftly grew bored and let his mind wander. He, Ron, and Hermione planned to do some more dueling practice that night. The room Dobby told them about really was a godsend in that respect. Desks and conjured mannequins were no replacement for a decent dueling range and interactive sparring dummies, and he didn't dare attempt an elemental invocation in an unwarded classroom. Not after the first time.

He came back to when Dumbledore roused from his work, looking up at the two silent denizens of his office, Dante dozing and Harry daydreaming.

"This may take some time," he said, directing his comment toward the demon hunter. "I am working on constructing a map, to track the devil's movement through the forest. I know you could find it well enough yourself, but it is not enough to kill the demons. We need to know where they are coming from."

 _From hell, I imagine,_ Harry's sarcastic side snarked, but his mind was working. The human and demon realms came close to overlapping in the deep forest, but the occasional demonic incursion wasn't usually a problem. Between bloodthirsty magical creatures like the acromantulas and carnivorous magical plants like the Greater Hydra, the deep forest was a deathtrap. The headmaster obviously believed there was a persistent planar breach in the forest, rather than the fairly common temporary cracks.

A thought occurred to him. _And couldn't a persistent breach-_

"Harry, would you give Dante a basic tour?" Dumbledore returned his attention to the parchment and demon pinion, missing or ignoring Harry's incredulous look. "Dinner begins in half an hour, well enough time for him to become familiar with the castle. By then I should be finished." The last part was clearly aimed at Dante, though the old wizard didn't deign to look up again.

The dismissal clear, Harry shifted his weight, fidgeting slightly as he looked at the demon hunter askance. Dante yawned and rose, lifting the huge sword with no visible effort and placing it on his back where it hung suspended by magic in front of a pair of handguns, one silver and the other black. Harry frowned as he stalked out of the office without another word.

 _Pistols? What is he, a Muggle? I didn't see a wand holster…_

Muggle demon hunters were something of a gray area in the Statute of Secrecy, true, but Harry couldn't imagine Dumbledore just inviting a Muggle into Hogwarts for any reason. Not to forget the sword floating at Dante's back unsupported – maybe Muggle-born, then? He wondered where the man was from. Hermione might know which Wizarding communities operated wand-free. Most didn't, as it was difficult, dangerous, and effectively useless in day to day life. At the same time-

"Hey kid. Does this place have pizza?"

… _the hell?_

"What?" Harry said aloud, stopping in place. He was mildly surprised to notice his feet had taken him halfway to the great hall while he'd been lost and thought.

"So that got your attention did it?" Dante said. His American accent cleared up any question of origin. "I was beginning to feel a little ignored."

"Just a little? I'll try harder next time," Harry rejoined automatically. He reran the question that had knocked him from his thoughts and added, "I don't know. It's not a meal option, but if you're going to be here, you could request it. You'd have to ask the house-elves, but I don't see why they wouldn't fix it."

"A school with no pizza. Always knew you wizards were ass-backwards."

Harry rolled his eyes. Watching Dudley eat pizza probably put him off of the stuff for life. And 'you' wizards? "And what's that make you?"

"A man with excellent taste," Dante replied, smirking slightly. Apparently he was brighter than his comments indicated, to recognize when someone was fishing for information. Harry expected no less from a career devil hunter.

"I hope you have excellent taste in something," said Harry, "but it's definitely not food." Dante snickered, and the 'tour' continued.

* * *

The reactions of the Castle inhabitants kept Harry and his friends amused as the last few weeks wound down until winter break. Half of the school watched Dante as though he were some rebel God dropped into their midst, and the rest eyed him warily, as though expecting him to explode and lash out in demonic rage. Dante's existence seemed to offend Umbridge personally to the point she attempted to allude he was an imposter – she swelled in a manner that put Aunt Marge to shame when the devil hunter outright laughed at the idea he was actually a fake having stolen the 'true' Dante's identity.

He also asked which of her parents had the predilection for ice, which no one understood until Hermione stumbled across a race of huge ice-natured toad demons in their extracurricular studies.

That reminded Harry of his determination to master Fiendfyre before heading to Grimmauld Place for the break, so he found himself leaving the Room of Requirement at later and later hours, taking a quick hot shower and collapsing unconscious in bed, too tired to dream. Hermione was concerned that he didn't get enough sleep, but the grogginess that Ron suffered the mornings after they trained together never bothered Harry.

It was for that reason that a warning bell sounded in Harry's head come the morning the students were to take the train home for break when he turned over and saw Ron's empty bed.

Harry put on his glasses and scanned the room quickly. The other Gryffindor boys were still fast asleep, something Harry considered with an eye-roll: if he were really the monster they took him for, he could splatter their guts across the dorm before any of them roused. Only Neville slept with his wand on him, and he remained horrifically inept at magic. More importantly, he saw that all of Ron's things were gone, whereas the night before they were scattered about and unpacked. That meant Ron wasn't just gone, he was _gone_ , and what could have happened that rushed him home mere hours before the train itself ran?

 _Something bad._

Was Ron the only one to leave, or were all the Weasleys gone? Harry rolled out of bed and dressed quickly, swishing his wand to pack the last of his belongings in his trunk and shrink it. Then he sent a Patronus-message to wake Hermione if she wasn't already up, and headed downstairs to the common room.

Unsurprisingly, Hermione met him at the stairs only a few minutes after he arrived, looking every bit as worried as he was.

"Ginny's not here either," she said. "I checked. Her roommates said she went to bed at the same time as usual and was gone when they woke up." She gave him a look as they passed through the portrait hole, saying _something serious must have happened_ without chancing words. "We mustn't make a fuss," she added in undertone. "Umbridge is bound to think something is… out of order, if we do."

"I should find out when I get to Snuffles' place," Harry replied, also quietly. "I'll have him send you a message if necessary. Hedwig if not."

Hermione nodded, and they let the subject drop there. They passed breakfast with idle chatter about the Grangers' winter plans to go skiing in Switzerland, carefully avoiding any mention of Harry's own plans or the Weasleys. A few people stared curiously, but Harry's status as a potential threat to society prevented them from personally asking questions. Umbridge eyed them with suspicion when she entered the Great Hall but found herself waylaid by Professor McGonagall long enough for Harry and Hermione to escape onto the grounds.

"You know, I wouldn't mind a Ministry insider teaching if he or she could actually teach," Hermione remarked sourly, layering a basic obfuscation ward over them both. Strictly, the grounds were still off-limits without faculty supervision. "The only people in that class that stand a chance of passing the Defense OWL are the three of us, and she has you and Ron nearly failing. She even takes points off my assignments for cross-referencing the text!"

"Sad for her, since the OWL replaces end-of-year exams." Harry couldn't care less what happened to the rest of the class, but the gross disparity between Umbridge's scores and the OWL results would be a nice egg-in-face for the ministry. The examiners for OWL and NEWT testing took an Oath of impartiality; neither Fudge nor Umbridge would be able to lodge a protest. Hermione considered it a tactical strike on the enemy's political front. Harry merely relished the idea of humiliating his detractors.

"This reminds me." Hermione chewed her lip, casting a wary eye about for anyone who might also have wandered outside against the rules and might overhear. "You were thinking of using Fiendfyre as your OWL project, right?"

"McGonagall'd be pissed if I did, but yeah. Ron's using Soulfire, and since the two are inversely-correlated fire invocations, they should display a resonance effect when pair-casted…" Harry trailed off, suddenly feeling awkward. Hermione's face had turned thoughtful.

"So you're working together? Resonance in pair-cast inversely-correlated natural element invocations... It's a good topic, but it would be better if you had at least two exemplars rather than just one. If Ron can master the Angels' Anthem, you can do the wind invocation: they aren't as closely correlated, but it would make a fascinating study in the influence of the degree of correlation on the strength of the resonated spell…" Hermione stopped, shook herself, and moved back out of research mode. "I was going to suggest you think about a different topic, but that's very well thought-out… I should choose mine to dovetail with it, and we can present a group project. Maybe something to direct the resonant, since if it just explodes, there are plenty of potions that do the same…"

 _And I understood all of that. Ron and I agree, understanding Hermione during her theory rants is not just amazing, it's actually fun…_

Harry snickered. "The difference is, Longbottom doesn't do it on purpose." Hermione snorted despite herself. "What's wrong with using Fiendfyre, anyway? Aside from McGonagall taking off points for ignoring what she told me."

"It's the Demonic Invocation of Fire, Harry," the Muggle-born said flatly, as though it should have been obvious. "Dumbledore can get away with using it because he's Dumbledore, and that still counts for something, but if you were just going to present it as an extra credit spell, I would've advised against it. I hadn't realized you two decided to do a research project."

"I don't think Ron realized it either, until I told him to start the incantalysis…" Harry caught Hermione's swiftly-hidden amusement. "When I said I wanted us to blow everyone else out of the water, I meant it. And not just our year. Mastery of a single invocation would net us an Outstanding, but plenty of people get Outstandings."

Hermione smiled at him with a hint of pride. "You may consider me brilliant Harry, but when you get motivated, I think you blow _me_ out of the water."

Harry's cheeks heated, and he changed the subject. They whiled away the next few hours before departure with a game of chess and a couple rounds of Exploding Snap.

The time flew, and it seemed like no time had passed before Harry and Hermione debarked at King's Cross station. The Muggle-born searched for her parents in the crowd while Harry searched out his welcoming committee: McGonagall told him to expect at least Tonks, Lupin, Moody, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. To their surprise, they found them together, sans Weasleys, and looking either grim or uncomfortable. Hermione ran up to her parents to give them each a hug, but Harry hung back, studying the expressions with a frown.

"Dad, what's wrong?" Hermione said, releasing her father from her embrace.

Mr. Granger glanced around, notably at Harry, and then said softly, "We've put off our holiday plans. I hope you don't mind, but you seem close to the Weasleys… I thought you might want to stay for a while longer."

"Why?" Hermione demanded, and Harry echoed, "What happened?"

The Order members exchanged grim looks, while the Drs. Granger fidgeted.

Finally, Moody decided to take charge. "Arthur Weasley was attacked early this morning by a giant snake just outside the Department of Mysteries. He's dead."

* * *

END PT III: DEVILS IN THE DETAILS


	4. death of everything

Notes: If it wasn't clear from my track record, it will be clear here. I pull no punches. Ever. Also, worldbuilding! If you're ever curious, please, please ask. I've probably thought way too much about the topic already and I love babbling.

* * *

Harry had never been to a Wizarding funeral before. Quirrell had tried to kill him, Riddle was a phantom from a diary, Pettigrew wasn't dead, and Amos Diggory might have tried killing Harry if he'd dared try and attend Cedric's funeral.

It was nothing like the Muggle funerals Harry went to with the Dursleys.

There was no casket, only a pyre upon which Mr. Weasley's body slowly burned. The acrid smell was laced with incense and various spices, chosen carefully by the living members of his immediate family for their meanings, the last messages to the dead. Purebloods always burned their dead, disallowing unscrupulous wizards an easy target.

Around the pyre was a kind of moat or gully, shining silver with liquid memories contained within. They constantly shifted, showing here Mr. Weasley as a student sleeping in History of Magic, there Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's wedding, there Mr. Weasley smiling down at his youngest child, the newborn Ginny… The line of mourners moved slowly as each approached the pyre, spoke quietly to the flickering flames, and drew from his or her temple another shimmering strand of memory to add. Harry and Hermione stood together in the line, not looking at each other. It was hard to drag their eyes away from the miserable figures seated around Mr. Weasley's pyre anyway.

By the time Harry reached the head of the line, he felt like a knot had tightened his throat. The smell was overpowering and the heat sweltering, and the remains within the flames were twisted and blackened. He couldn't see the Mr. Weasley he knew in that smoldering corpse, and suddenly, as the moat of memories changed to display the redhead fiddling with the old Ford Anglia, the surreal experience turned jarringly, painfully concrete.

 _Dead. Mr. Weasley is dead._

He tried to speak and the words clogged up his throat.

" _Mr. Potter, you were raised by Muggles… tell me, what is the purpose of a rubber duck?"_

" _Harry lad, any boy your age is going to get into trouble, and Ron got into it with you. But you saved my daughter's life, and for that alone, my home will always be open."_

There was nothing he could say. Nothing really expressed his feelings concerning the man who had treated him like yet another son: they were almost fatherly, but he had Sirius, and his godfather had stolen that spot before Mr. Weasley could ever really claim it.

"Thank you for everything, Mr. Weasley," he managed, lamely, and drew his wand. More swirling silver strands joined the sea of memory, and he moved off, intending to sidle away like the rest of the guests. Instead, Mrs. Weasley seized his shoulder and pulled him over with the rest of the family, wrapping her arms around him in a hug. She sobbed into bottle-green dress robes, sobs that were all painful hitching breath and pouring emotion. Harry figured she exhausted her tears hours ago.

"The war… it's barely started," she whispered into his ear, her voice hoarse from crying. "It's barely started and it's taken my Arthur. Harry, oh Harry. You Know Who wants you the most. He's going to go after you, and Ron, and Ginny, and Hermione…" She gasped harshly, somehow summoning more tears to spill. "You're only children. _Children_. But that… that _wizard_ will go after you anyway. Please, Harry. Promise me you'll be careful. I can't take… I can't take the thought of losing any of you…"

In spite of himself, Harry felt his eyes grow watery. Sirius may have taken on the role of surrogate father, but Mrs. Weasley was the only mother figure he ever had. That she counted him among her own children as people she couldn't handle dying…

 _I'll need to redouble my dueling practice…_

"I'll try, Mrs. Weasley. I can't promise, but I'll try."

Later, after the eulogy, Harry joined Hermione where she sat next to a blank-eyed Ron. His presence seemed to rouse the redhead, and he looked sharply at Harry. "We'll be practicing those spells at Snuffles' won't we?" he said quietly. "We'll be using the dueling range, too. Right?"

"Your mum…"

"Mum?" He laughed hollowly. "Mum won't mind anymore. Dad always wanted to give us some extra tutoring in the summers, but she wouldn't hear of it…"

"It is against the law," Hermione said uncertainly, "and he was a Ministry official…"

"That's what Percy always said too." Ron's expression turned ugly. "And you see who refused even to attend his own father's funeral? Sanctimonious bastard. Sent nothing but a letter saying Dad knew what he was getting into, mixing with the wrong crowd and with that deranged Harry Potter… Saying he had solid reasons for suspicion that you killed him, Harry, since you're obviously the only Parselmouth in Britain."

"What?" Hermione nearly hissed.

Harry stared in a moment's wide-eyed stupefaction before he suddenly grew very hot. Anger set his blood to boiling and one hand crept unconsciously to his wand. Scorched holly burned under his fingers. "I would _never_ -"

"I want to kill them," Ron said softly, shuddering with repressed rage. Both Harry and Hermione fell silent in surprise. "It's not right, that people like the Death Eaters and Voldemort get to kill all they like and all they get is prison. They don't even get the Dementor's Kiss unless they embarrass the Ministry like Sirius did! They're worse than demons! Humans are supposed to know better. And the Ministry is just as bad. All they're doing is covering things up because you have an alibi and they refuse to admit it could be someone else! They're all bloody bastards and I really, really want to kill them."

At the end of his tirade, Ron closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and visibly calmed. Then he continued on a different tack.

"I wonder if it's this magic we're teaching ourselves that makes me think like this. Soulfire… to start with I always had to be so angry to cast it. And I had to have a good reason. Like… I'd think about Umbridge taking potshots at your family, or Malfoy calling Hermione nasty names. I'd think about stuff that hurt people I cared about, and how badly I wanted to destroy it."

"Righteous anger," Hermione murmured. Ron nodded.

"And maybe that's not good, you know? I can't kill Malfoy just because he calls Hermione a Mudblood, even if it's disgusting. If we just destroy everything that tried to hurt us, doesn't that make us just as bad?" Ron paused again, a moment longer this time, and Harry realized the redhead was secreting his anger and grief away to a little corner in his mind, saving it away for future use. Effective, but probably unhealthy.

"Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself," Hermione summarized. "The Golden Rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. If only more people lived by it, the world would be a much better place."

"I'm sure the house-elves would like it better," Harry inserted dryly. He eyed his friend thoughtfully. It was unlike Ron to be so open like this, and he thought he knew where the monologue was going. Personally, Harry agreed. "Hermione, you're the only person I know who even tries. I don't."

Hermione looked startled. "What do you mean?"

"Do unto others as they would do unto you." Harry shot her a half-smile, but it was bitter. "What d'you think is the real reason I won't teach anyone else defense? If they were in my place, they'd gladly leave me to rot – and I don't put it past them to use what I teach them against me, either."

Ron nodded, having determined that for himself the hard way. "So we train?"

Harry echoed it, noticing sadness flash in Hermione's eyes and change to determination. "We train."

* * *

Sirius heartily agreed with the decision the three made to train through break. Though they were careful to always appear for dinner when Mrs. Weasley cooked, it came as a surprise when they trundled downstairs one morning for breakfast and saw a squat makeshift Christmas tree had appeared, along with a small mound of presents. Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked each other askance, and then the boys distracted everyone long enough for Hermione to verify it was indeed Christmas Day.

Harry was thankful he had purchased his own gifts in Hogsmeade before the end of term, because he simply hadn't thought of it since; for Ron and Hermione he bought a pair of dragonhide wand holsters, seeing the usefulness of his own.

Despite the occasion, the mood was somber, and the unwrapping of the gifts progressed mostly with smiles and quiet thanks. Mrs. Weasley watched with eyes that swam with tears, though so far she kept them from falling. Since most of the Order members were elsewhere, celebrating with their own families, only Harry, Hermione, Sirius, and the Weasleys were there.

The first Weasley Christmas minus Mr. Weasley.

If the emerald green scarf was a little scruffier than usual, Harry left it unsaid.

Then Sirius left for a moment and came back with a large rectangular package wrapped in simple brown packing paper. He presented it to Mrs. Weasley. "Your family took care of Harry when I couldn't," he said sharply when she tried to protest, and he held it as she slowly tore the paper free.

It was a magical portrait – an empty magical portrait. Mrs. Weasley burst into tears, and her children stared in stunned amazement at the Azkaban escapee like they had never seen him before.

"It's not the same," Sirius admitted. "Merlin knows it's not the same. But you have his deathspell… you should have the choice."

The elderly witch was too choked up to say anything, but the look she gave Sirius spoke volumes.

Harry turned slightly to Ron, and spoke in undertone. "What just happened?"

"That's a wizarding portrait," he whispered back, sounding hoarse. Then he tried to explain further. "Magical canvas, magical frame… the deathspell can animate it. During the burning, it soaks up the memories from the mourners… it leaves an imprint of the wizard, as they knew him."

Hermione gasped softly. "That's how the Hogwarts portraits were made? As echoes of real people?"

 _But they're just echoes_ , Harry thought. What would be worse for Mrs. Weasley, losing her husband entirely or living with a not-quite-real portrait facsimile of him? He caught Sirius' eye and knew the other man felt the same. It was better to have a clean break than to cling to memories. _But she deserves the choice._

Ron studied the frame, studied his mother, and then looked away, painfully conflicted. "Dad's dead."

If there was a worst time for yet more misfortune, this was it. So, naturally, misfortune came.

An explosion from outside rocked the house, making everyone flinch in surprise. For a second the gathered witches and wizards peered about dumbly, before another explosion kicked everyone into action. Harry sprang to his feet, wand and knife at the ready, while Sirius swished his wand in a complex circuit at the wall. Plaster, molding, and support beams became transparent, and the wizard cursed virulently at what he saw. Grimmauld Place swarmed with demons, numbers eleven and thirteen were alight with violent cursed fire, and several cloaked figures on broomsticks circled above, out of range and watching the chaos.

"I thought this place was safe-" one of the twins said.

Ron cut him off. "It is, if you want to let the Muggles all die."

"I told Dumbledore it might come to this," Sirius growled. "Fred, get Molly out of here; have her summon the Order. George, I need you to go to the Ministry. Raise hell until they send some people. We're going to need help."

"And what about them?" George retorted, gesturing to the rest of the room with a sweep of his arm.

Sirius paused. "Take Ginny with you." The redhead witch immediately began to protest but was ignored. "I know you won't like this Molly, but Harry, Ron and Hermione are going to have to stay. I can't take that horde alone, and I've seen them dueling. They're each more than a match for an Order member." Now Fred and George complained. Mrs. Weasley seemed too shaken up to even speak. "You can Apparate, they're too young. Now _go_!"

Faces sullen, the twins reluctantly obeyed.

The older wizard then turned to Harry and his friends. There was a light in Sirius' eyes; rather than grim or subdued, he actually seemed excited. "One thing, you three," he said, holding up a finger. "Don't hold back. Dumbledore's birdies will. The Ministry will. But when something's trying to kill you, you don't hold back."

 _Birdies?_

"You realize all three of us can Apparate?" Harry asked instead.

Sirius smiled, showing every one of his teeth. "I do, but they don't. Let's go." He disappeared with the distinct _crack_ of Apparation.

"Your godfather's insane, Harry."

Harry favored Ron with a two-fingered salute and disapparated, unloading with a reductor curse as soon as the world swam back into view. He brought Sangreus up to block the scythe of a second demon, swishing his wand – jerk-snap, five loops like a rounded star… he released the _extensor_ burning curse through a circle around him, dusting the Hells that were crowding in. This drew the attention of the broom-mounted Death Eaters, and two sent lances of deadly green in his direction.

" _Accio_!" A Hell Pride was jerked from its position and flew to intercept the Killing Curses. The impact slammed it into the ground, where it lay twitching in pain.

Twitching in pain… but alive.

 _What the hell?_

Harry's moment of surprise nearly cost him, but a flash of heatless ivory fire dusted the demon striking at his back before its weapon could hit home. He snapped back into gear instantly.

"I think that makes us even, Harry!" Ron yelled, surrounded by a nimbus of Soulfire.

"Not for long," he rejoined, and extended his mind toward the feeling of burning, boiling fury – he felt it flicker to life, his wand a searing heat under his fingers. Above him the Death Eater peeled away on their brooms, knowing better than to trust flammable material to protect them from fire. The Demonic Invocation of Fire flashed into existence, lashing out at the nearest demon, and then another, and another. It took the form of a dragon, and then a hydra, and then a basilisk, and settled on a sun-bright blazing stag that reared its magnificent rack in challenge.

 _Kill them._ Harry twined the demons and Death Eaters in a single thought and allowed the wicked sentience of the Fiendfyre spell to consume it. _Kill them all._ The stag bellowed in savage glee, its aura flaring blindingly-bright in the instant before it surged forward in attack.

With a tight smirk, Harry turned to his own fights.

Swish, tri-loop, jab – " _Conglaciare_!"

A sector seven feet in radius became instantly incrusted in several inches of ice; the immense heat from the charging fire invocation forced it to sublime, expanding into superheated water vapor. A follow-up wind spell turned the steam into an aerial assault – the fleeing broom-borne Death Eaters found their mounts exploding to flame underneath them. The panicked screams as they fell into the midst of their own summoned horde made Harry smile, even if a couple were quick-witted enough to Apparate to safety.

He didn't have long to be satisfied, though. The demons that were smart enough to stay away from the Fiendfyre stag crowded in. Harry buried Sangreus in the face of a Hell Lust, wrenching it free as it dusted and spinning on his heel to send it flying at a Hell Greed in the beginnings of a call for friends. Jerk-snap, swish, flick, " _Homus reducto_!" and the globe of yellow reductor curse spellglow curved around the Greed's coffin shield to splatter the demon before it could finish.

Harry took a step back then, using a quake hex/knockback jinx combination to gain some breathing room. Ron and Hermione stood back-to-back near number 10, shielding some petrified Muggles as they fled into the apparent safety of the house. _Predictable_. It took him longer to locate Sirius in the chaos, and in the end he was only able to do so by the mad laugh which cut through the screams and yells of the humans and demons alike. _Typical Sirius_.

More worrisome was the thick scarlet mist that hung in the air, near where Sirius' laughter had come.

He summoned Sangreus back to him, ghosted the blade over the skin of his arm, and launched into a full-scale assault. Jerk-snap, five loops like a rounded star, circumscribed: " _Exsectus medius flagulatus – exsectus effluo!_ " The light of the slashing hex came to life, three feet of maroon spellglow that hissed and spit, leaking energy that left long gaping gashes in whatever it touched. He spun on his heel, dusting several demons in the process, and lashed out with Sangreus at another, knocking it away with a kick once damage was done. Behind him a new demon approached slowly, struggling with the weight of an immense pulsating orange thing on its shoulders; Harry recognized it from Sirius' research as a Hell Wrath, cursed under his breath, and Disapparated in time to avoid injury when the Wrath's sack exploded.

Reappearing next to number 13, Harry immediately swiped with the _extensor_ slashing hex, clearing room for him to maneuver. Gouges appeared in the door of the house, but he ignored them and dashed forward into the thick of the battle around Sirius. Using Sangreus mainly as a shield, he tore through demon after demon with the spell-whip, only releasing it when the energy bleed had rendered it too weak to use. Then he let loose with a blasting curse and smirked through the gap at his godfather, who returned a mad grin.

"More incoming," Harry told him, nailing two demons with a reductor curse and Sangreus to the face, respectively.

"The breach is still open," replied Sirius, his grin fading somewhat as he grew serious. Five Muggle households were lit like bonfires, thanks as much to the Fiendfyre stag that even now immolated a handful of Hells as to the demons themselves; several charred skeletons were visible, Death Eater and Muggle both; and the mist that signified demons traversing the breach threatened more trouble on the way. "I need to – _Effringo_! – seal the breach. Harry, can you hold them?"

"These?" Blowing another hole in the demons' ranks with a blasting curse of his own, Harry shot his godfather a cocky grin. "Sirius, _I've_ given myself better fights. I've got this."

The convict swore, giving Harry a look of mingled pride and worry, and slashed his wand in a complex arc: " _Terra parsaer_!" The earth magic wrenched from the ground thick branches and vines which formed a hemispherical barrier of protection which hid Sirius from sight while he attended to fixing the breach.

Harry put the earth wall to his back. It was a strong protection, but it wouldn't help if a demon teleported into it, as Hell Sloths were wont to do; he had to keep their attention. Well, either he or Ron and Hermione; he sent a _Patronus_ message in his friends' direction to warn them of the situation, then brought his wand to bear.

 _Hell Sloths hate ice._

Jerk-snap, double loop, and jab, " _Glacius_!" The second-level ice spell summoned a single pillar of ice, which Harry shattered into a cloud of lethally-sharp ice shards with a simple knockback jinx and sent flying with a wind spell. A couple of the encroaching demons stalled, stunned, but the attack wasn't strong enough to dust any of them; Harry followed up with a call of " _Conglaciare_!" that buried the ground under half a foot of ice. Casting a traction charm on his shoes, Harry jumped onto the surface of the ice, giving his wand a familiar movement. " _Ignis infernus flagulatus – ignis infernus effluo_!" The full length of the _extensor_ burning curse lashed out, bisecting several of the remaining Hells, who stumbled and slipped on the magical ice.

The set of Sloths each gave laborious groans, the cue to expect teleportation. Harry ducked down, whirling seven feet of heat-bleeding spell-whip in a circle around him. The spell blasted back all but two. Harry blocked the scythe of one with Sangreus and tried to dodge the other, but didn't quite succeed. The scythe tore a large gash in his right shoulder, eliciting a howl. But he'd suffered worse in training; he gritted his teeth and kicked away the Sloth he'd blocked. As he couldn't move his right arm freely, Harry twisted around and buried Sangreus in the face of the other. It dusted, dropping the knife to the floor, but he didn't summon it. Instead he switched hands, nailing the second Sloth with the burning curse before releasing it in the direction of the fallen.

" _Ferula_ ," he whispered, gesturing vaguely at his chest. The Bandaging charm crafted a makeshift cast for his shoulder, wrapping tightly around his chest and over and under his arm. Then, feeling heat turn the ice under his shoes to vapor that curved around his heatproof-enchanted clothing, Harry jerked his wand up in the beginning of a water spell, but stopped.

The Fiendfyre stag cantered over, its rack held high. It appeared to eye him with a degree of contempt, no doubt because of his injury, but when he reached for the spell's anchor of fury and rage and released it, it faded without a fight.

 _At least I have you well in hand._

Harry gave the battlefield a once-over, wincing slightly – though whether at the destruction or at the tatters his already rotten reputation would be in after this got out, he wasn't sure. The mist was gone, but so were several houses and people. He watched Ron's Soulfire invocation die away, as Hermione stepped away from him to go and calm the terrified Muggles and try and deal with their injuries. Ron caught his eye, rolling his own. Of course the battle was over and the Ministry still wasn't there. If they were, Fudge might have to pull his head out of his arse, and they couldn't have that, could they?

A thought struck him. Harry gave the earth wall another look. How long was Sirius going to take? He couldn't be out here when the Ministry people arrived, either. Fudge would have him Kissed in a heartbeat.

He sheathed his wand and picked up Sangreus. He contented himself with carrying it, wary of disturbing his throbbing shoulder.

Then, as he turned to walk over to his friends, the earth barrier exploded.

A large chunk of earth and branch nailed Harry in the back, close enough to the shoulder to send him to the ground reeling in pain; he clenched his fingers around Sangreus and rolled, ignoring the further agony this caused him as he wheeled around to face whatever new threat had appeared. The breach-mending had obviously not gone well.

 _But the mist was_ gone-

 _Because what was on its way_ arrived.

" _Sirius_!"

Harry staggered to his feet, Sangreus in hand, and launched himself bodily toward the closest demon. The Hell Pride went down easily, as did another, and another. There weren't many, but what was behind the Hells gave Harry pause.

Sirius was dueling Sirius. Harry stared at one and the other, startled but fascinated. It wasn't like he'd never seen his godfather duel a Draft doppelganger, but it wasn't hard to pick out the real Sirius in a match between him and his grayscale copy. These men were twins, which meant – well, that one of them was a _real_ doppelganger devil. They looked the same, moved the same, and fought the same – wore the same look of wild fury and savage glee. One of them was just a bit quicker than the other, though. Just quick enough, as Harry watched, to roll under a blistering combination of effect-impact curses and hexes and give his wand a single horizontal slash, for the slashing hex at point-blank range to rip the doppelganger's torso into two and send the devil flying backwards, blood spraying everywhere. It hit the ground hard, twitching, releasing a doglike whine of agony and clutching at the organs that threatened to spill out of its ruptured abdomen.

Sirius eyed his opponent cautiously, but with a familiar air of contempt, straightening when he decided the other wasn't getting up again.

Then he turned around, and seeing Harry, bared his teeth in a vicious smile and lunged.

Harry instinctively chucked Sangreus at his face and dropped to the ground, drawing his wand and countering with a blasting curse in a single fluid movement. His mind caught up a second later, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach, replaced by a thick, creeping horror.

 _This isn't Sirius._

Which meant the person – the one he'd taken for the demon, the one that was just a bit slower, the one that was just a bit less skilled – dying on the cobblestone roadway, holding his guts in, _was_.

 _No. No no no._

The devil side-rolled to dodge the curse and jerked his wand up in a shield charm to block the next volley, but it didn't come.

Harry inhaled a ragged breath.

Despite the enemy right in front of him, his eyes drifted over to the prone form of his godfather; the man was desperately trying to pull himself upright, shoving at Hermione's wand to interrupt her attempts to stabilize him. And Sirius had the right of it, there was nothing she could do. Even if they were at St. Mungo's with a full Healer team on call, it wouldn't change things.

 _It won't help._

He felt hot all over, like fire was pumping through his veins instead of blood; he could hear every thump of his heartbeat unnaturally loud in his ears. The shaft of holly clenched in his left hand seemed to pulse in time with it, shooting off a volley of green sparks.

He looked up, met the doppelganger's faux gray eyes, exhaled.

Something left that wasn't just air.

 _Scream, you bastard, scream._

The doppelganger screamed.

 _Let's see how you like your organs splattered all over the road._

Thick blood and glutinous flesh stuck to his hands and somewhere, in a distant corner of his mind, he realized it wasn't just the devil screaming.

 _Dust to dust, you son of a bitch._

 _You can die just as well as Sirius can._

Then the devil was collapsing, its body turning to energy that burned a dark violet and bled into the cobblestone; it snaked its way over the ground, fleeing and vanishing into his shadow. Harry jerked as it did so, a brief flash of euphoria and power sending his pulse racing.

The last thing he remembered was the feeling of fire in his veins leaving and taking his energy with it.

* * *

END PT IV: DEATH OF EVERYTHING


	5. dawns the light of truth

Notes: After everything that's gone on, I think Harry's earned a breather. We take a break for story and character advancement. The first scene of this part is actually one of my favorites. Question for the readers regarding it: Team Dante or Team Vergil? I'm curious as to your opinions. Also, when you get to it, Hermione _is_ making the reference you think she is. You'll know what I mean. At the end here, some of you might argue Harry isn't being rational. That's certainly true, but consider: how rational would you be in his place?

* * *

It wasn't possible to pin down what Harry noticed first, upon waking. The air itched at his nose, thick and musty with a touch of mildew and very, very faintly something metallic he couldn't quite place. The fabric of his clothes and the sheets that sandwiched his body rubbed at his skin in a peculiar manner, hyperaware of every thread but the overall sensation dulled. When he opened his eyes, blinking up at the ceiling of his Grimmauld Place bedroom, it was to see the fine filigree laid in exacting detail and contrast that made it almost unfamiliar. Taking a breath that sounded unnaturally loud to his ears, Harry shifted to an upright position.

 _I feel strange…_

The faint sound of footsteps from beyond the door prevented Harry from pursuing the thought further. They paused just outside, and the door swung open to admit Albus Dumbledore. The aged headmaster looked for once as though he felt every one of his one-hundred-and-fifty-odd years, despite the brief flash of something like relief in his eyes when he saw Harry quietly resting in the bed.

"It is good to see you awake, Harry," he greeted kindly, coming to stand by the bedside.

"It hasn't been that long, has it?" Harry studied a clenched fist curiously. Something about the play of muscles beneath the skin seemed peculiar. "If it'd been bad, I'd be in St. Mungo's. The last thing I remember…"

Sirius. Sirius' guts strewn across the lot in front of Grimmauld Place. Sirius trying to get up and keep fighting, knowing there was nothing Hermione could do…

Throwing not-Sirius' guts across the lot in turn.

"Sirius is dead, isn't he." Something hot and thick crawled up his throat and lodged itself there, but his voice came out even. Dumbledore nodded without speaking. "What happened? I fought it. I killed it, but I'm not sure what happened. I was just so angry…" The memories were a red-stained blur in his mind. He could remember stabbing his fingers into seemingly human flesh, the blood greasing his hand as he seized and _ripped_ , could remember the savage satisfaction at hearing the devil-in-Sirius-skin shrieking in agony.

Harry couldn't find it in him to be disgusted by it, either.

"That is… a difficult question to answer," hedged Dumbledore, when he finally spoke after a moment of silence. "Before we discuss that, I believe you would appreciate being informed about the events that followed your falling unconscious. Rest assured we will revisit the topic later." Harry acquiesced with a slow nod, his thoughts not straying far from the vague memories. Dumbledore, noticing this, sighed. "The short of it is this: the Ministry has finally acknowledged Voldemort's return."

Harry straightened reflexively, attention now rapt. "But there were no Ministry witnesses- "

"There weren't – here," Dumbledore corrected. "But the attack on Grimmauld Place was far from the only assault that took place on Christmas Day, I fear, though it was the first. In total there were thirteen attacks. Escher Square and Diagon Alley were sacked. Many Muggle areas were targeted, among those your relatives' Surrey home and Ms. Granger's home in Oxford. Even those may not have been enough to force Cornelius to recant his denials, however, had Voldemort himself not appeared in the Ministry atrium as the day wound to a close, and personally rent a hole in the Demon World seal that flooded the building with demons."

Another long silence followed, as Harry digested the news. A frown worked itself to his face. Voldemort, intentionally revealing himself to the Ministry? It didn't make sense. _Unless_ \- "He's showing off," Harry murmured. "He's got a trump card. Has to have. The Ministry was doing his job for him. Voldemort wouldn't give that up without a reason." He trailed off, giving Dumbledore an inquiring stare. "Just how long have I been out? With that sort of chaos you shouldn't be here."

Dumbledore chuckled in response. "Not the weeks you expect, Harry. It is 27th December, so you've been unconscious for the better part of two days; I am here because I need to be here. There are questions that need to be answered, and for many of them we are the best-fitted to answer them. The first, indeed, is the one you yourself asked: what happened to you after the Doppelganger devil killed Sirius Black?" He paused, and grimness crept back into his expression. "To begin answering that – Harry, look in the mirror."

Harry looked, and with his emotions at a distance, decided his reflection looked nothing like him.

Well, that wasn't quite true. The eyes that stared back, wide with shock, were a familiar startling green, almond-shaped and thickly-lashed. That was where the similarity ended, however. The bone structure of his face was different, less rounded. Then there was the hair, a shock of snowy white, lightly tousled from sleep but tamer than Harry's had ever dared to be; the fringe hung down just shy of eye level, framing the only familiar feature.

 _Except I'm not wearing my glasses_ , Harry realized _, and I can still see. No, I can see_ better.

… _what the hell._

He didn't look like Harry Potter, but he did look familiar. Suddenly his doppelganger's aberrant appearance made sense – it did look like him, it was just that Harry didn't. In fact, what with the hair, he looked more like-

 _You're kidding me._

Harry wheeled back around to face the headmaster. "The devil hunter. Dante. I look like _him_." He bit off a second, verbal exclamation of _what the hell_. Dumbledore's expression didn't change. Harry stared at him in incredulity. "You can't be serious."

"I have said nothing," Dumbledore rejoined, his light tone belied by the steady look in his eyes.

"You can't be _serious_ ," Harry repeated, starting to get angry at the implication. "Dad didn't die for some bastard-"

"No, he didn't." The headmaster's tone turned sharp, cutting off whatever else Harry might've said. "James Potter died for his wife and his son, and this changes _nothing_ about that. Whatever happened – and we will probably never know – he knew about it. The fact that you took his appearance was no mistake or subterfuge. He adopted you." He leaned forward, emphasizing his next words. "And whatever happened, your mother died for _you_. This only makes that sacrifice even more astounding."

 _Why, because I was an accident?_ Harry thought savagely. The anger licked at his insides, not so much the familiar heat anymore as a sort of tension that threatened to burst out of his skin. "And I look like this now because – what, I got un-adopted?"

"Harry, calm yourself, please." Though phrased as a request, Dumbledore's words held a whipcrack of command.

Harry swallowed his reflexive retort, looked away, and focused on his breathing, until the feeling of tension sloughed off. Studying the intricate detail work on the paneling made it easier not to think. The dark-stained black walnut wound around at eye-level and framed the door. It was there the detail became most complex; dozens of wooden faux-threads curved in and around each other, like a Celtic knot.

 _Or like entangled bowels_ , a morbid fraction of his mind noted, pulling to front a red-hazed memory of not-Sirius with his innards spilt over Grimmauld Place, the sticky feeling of mesentery-

Harry's hand twitched, and he jerked his attention back to Dumbledore, who had waited in silent patience. He could think about Sirius' death or about whatever fuck-up was his parentage, but not both. Bloody hell, did Sirius know? _Don't go there._ "So why?"

"What I am about to tell you must _not_ become common knowledge. I would ask for not to leave this room, but I believe I know better than to expect Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger not to be informed." Dumbledore's expression became pensive. "The three of you have thrown yourselves into demonology studies; tell me, what do you know of the legend of Sparda?"

Thrown by the non-sequitur, Harry took a moment to respond. "He's the devil best known for turning on the demon world in defense of mankind. Two thousand years ago, during the last Great Hell Incursion, he was the Hell Emperor's strongest general, but he turned on him for reasons unknown. Sparda defeated Mundus, routed his army, and sacrificed a priestess and most of his power to seal the portal between the two realms."

"A concise, yet thorough, summary. Of course, the story does not stop there," Dumbledore answered, sounding pleased. "There are scholars who have devoted their entire lives to tracing Sparda's impact on history: the many powerful figures he advised, the names he took and elevated to respect, and time and again the demonic threats he laid to rest. Mundus was the first, but not the last." He paused for a moment, as though debating adding something then deciding against it. "Unfortunately, to my knowledge Sparda met his end sometime between twenty-five to thirty years ago."

 _So a devil that survived tens of thousands of years in the demon world doesn't manage two thousand in the human world. Ironic._ Interesting trivia, to be sure, but Harry wondered what that had to do with him.

"And now we come to a closely guarded secret, Harry. While the legend of Sparda is widely known even in the Muggle world, what few people know is that shortly before his death, he took a human lover-"

 _Oh. That._

"Don't tell me," Harry interjected, sarcasm bleeding into his voice. "The legendary demon finally found love and had a kid before he met his tragic end protecting them." _And if this has anything to do with the previous topic of conversation…_ "It's Dante, isn't it? The son of Sparda." He laughed. The sound was strained as he tried to wrestle down a new flash of anger. "You're not just saying I'm a bastard. You're saying I'm devilspawn on top of that! Even the _Dursleys_ didn't go that far."

 _They'd have drowned me in holy water if I'd given them the slightest indication._

Dumbledore winced slightly, sighing. "Yes, Dante is the son of Sparda – or one of them, as he had twin sons. Both of them happened to be in the United Kingdom around the time your mother became pregnant: Dante taking jobs from the Ministry, Vergil doing I know not what. I must emphasize that the Ministry knows nothing of Dante's heritage."

"Of course not. A half-devil's a half-devil… they might not hunt him down but they'd have nothing to do with him." Harry fell silent for a beat, as it sank in that everything that applied to Dante would also apply to him, maybe even moreso. They already thought him a demon summoner, after all. "And that means they can't suspect anything about me, either." _That'll be fun. The hair's a dead giveaway…_

"Even were Dante an ordinary Muggle, letting the Ministry or the wizarding populace suspect you were not the Harry Potter they believe you are would be a disaster," added Dumbledore. At Harry's look, he explained. "Public opinion is fickle, Harry. As soon as the Ministry admitted Voldemort's return, you ceased to be a deluded attention-seeker and are now considered a hero for speaking out even at cost to yourself." Harry snorted, prompting a brief smile from the headmaster. "Even so, we cannot allow any hint of what happened here with the Doppelganger devil to reach the Ministry."

"I ripped its guts out," Harry reflected. _Wondered how it liked having its intestines spilling out on the ground._ Something in him shifted. "I can see how people wouldn't take that well…"

"Not only that, Harry, but what happened immediately afterward." Dumbledore met Harry's eyes for a brief moment before he closed them. "Your attack, while… unorthodox, was nonetheless effective. Defeated, the devil chose submission over death, much like the blood-based devil you fought at Privet Drive. Rather than a Devil Arm, I suspect it gave you a power or technique. In doing so, along with your heightened emotional state, it triggered a transformation to a demonic form. It lasted mere seconds, but that transformation is responsible for your change in appearance. When we recovered you, you were drenched in blood we matched to James Potter. Currently we are researching ways to restore you to normal."

 _But this is normal, isn't it? I've been living a lie all my life._ Harry said nothing, only nodded.

Dumbledore echoed the nod and straightened. "I have taken the liberty of informing the Weasleys of the basics. It is up to your discretion to include your relation to Sparda; I believe they are under the impression your temporary transformation was due to the Doppelganger's transfer of power, something that is not entirely untrue." Heading to the door, the headmaster paused to add, "I must now return to marshal the chaos, but I will return as soon as we have a solution to hide your nature. There is one last thing I must tell you: Dante knows nothing of this. He is simply too high-profile among devils, and the last thing we need is for all of Sparda's enemies to come after you in addition to Voldemort."

With a last nod of acknowledgment, Dumbledore slipped out and shut the door behind him. Harry sat on the bed in silence as minutes dragged by, before he broke the stillness with a sneer and a voice filled with sarcasm.

"So Sirius is dead, James Potter isn't my father, I'm part-devil, and I can turn into a demon." Harry laughed, high and bitter. "This just keeps getting better and better!"

* * *

Throughout his time at Hogwarts, there were times when Harry felt like an exhibit at a zoo, or more recently, like a particularly dangerous beast allowed to roam freely among men. Sometimes he made a show of growing angry, so that people avoided him in trepidation of inciting some form of revenge; but in truth, he had accustomed himself to it, and it rarely bothered him anymore.

This was different.

Harry allowed himself to collapse into one of the Black library's cramped chairs, ignoring the cloud of dust his action stirred up.

Mr. Weasley's funeral was bad enough. Standing in the long, meandering line, the acrid stench of burning flesh searing his nose, watching the pyre come more and more into view, seeing the echoes of days gone in the mist that rose from the moat of memories… Harry doubted the image would ever fade.

 _But that wasn't Sirius._

There was a piece of him that told him Sirius' death was no worse than Mr. Weasley's; indeed, there were fewer to miss him and Sirius had less to miss. That didn't make sitting in front of the blaze as the closest kin to the deceased any easier, and Harry had sat there woodenly, eyes free of tears, acknowledging the condolences with a nod but nothing else. It would have probably been simpler if he had cried, but he couldn't. The tears simply didn't come.

Why would a devil cry?

Harry buried his face in his hands. There was a hollow at the base of his throat, an empty tightness that just wouldn't go away. He turned his thoughts away from the pyre, to other details. It was easier to be angry.

Sirius' memorial was a small, literally in-house affair, with few guests and fewer mourners. The fact remained that the man was an escaped convict, whom the Ministry would sooner consign to rot than allow the dignity of a burning. Although Dumbledore's word was enough to convince most of the Order of his innocence, the ingrained distaste left by ten years known as an infamous murderer and traitor left him an outcast in his own house; his hatred of the house left him confrontational and simply made things worse. Sirius was distrusted and disliked, and Harry wished he could have thrown out every wizard that walked by his burning corpse without having shared a memory.

 _It wasn't a funeral. It was a farce._

It was over.

Harry took a breath, exhaled slowly, and let the tension ease from muscles that were stiff from the three-hour service. Dimly he could hear footsteps. Although spells, aided by the stacks and the dust, dampened noises in the library, his unnaturally acute hearing picked up the sounds with little trouble and even tagged names to them: Ron and Hermione.

Acute, yet discriminating; that described his senses well, Harry thought. If his sensitivity to soft sounds were universal, then the din that followed Tonks' usual, accidental rousing of Mrs. Black before the memorial would have rendered him deaf. Every part of him seemed fine-tuned to focus in on anything out of the ordinary, any possible threat, while preventing the side-effects that plagued similar spells like the supersensory charm. Survival of the fittest had prepared devils for a much harsher environment than any humans were subjected to, after all.

"To think I came here for some peace," Harry drawled as the footsteps drew close, prompting two muffled sounds of surprise. He didn't turn, though, so it was a second before his friends sidled into view, one on each side, seating themselves around his table and its mound of scattered texts.

"After that farce of a ceremony, I suppose everyone wants a bit of peace," said Hermione tartly, scanning her eyes over the titles in front of her. Some of the labels were in old Latin and Greek, but many were in one of the runic futharks. A couple even appeared to be written in modern English, but Harry knew better.

"So I'm not the only one who thought that was a disgrace?" Harry commented dryly, leaning back.

"Bloody hell, no, mate," Ron interjected. He made a face. "Mum's on a tirade. Said that if anything like that had gone on at – at Dad's funeral, she would've hexed them, and _then_ gone and reported to them to the Law Enforcement office."

"For disturbing the peace," Hermione continued. She rooted through the stack and pulled free one of the English-inscribed texts, flipping it open to browse. "There's no law against coming to a funeral or memorial to make a statement, rather than to mourn. In fact, in the Muggle world, it's not unheard of for people to stage active protests outside of funerals. It is near-universally considered in bad taste, but not unlawful."

Harry scowled, but before he could voice a scathing remark Ron spoke up again.

"As if we needed any more reason to believe Muggles are mad." The redhead shot the brunette an eye-roll. "Anyway, with most funerals, you choose who to invite – and anyone else that shows up, you can give a solid hex and no one'll say anything about it."

There was a moment of silence, and then Harry said slowly, "Funny how I didn't have that option…"

"Dumbledore probably thought better of the Order members," Hermione said, acting like Harry's statement was a cue. "Tonks certainly looked upset, and several of the others were clearly angry. And Lupin!" She trailed off, shaking her head.

 _Lupin looked like someone tore his heart out and spewed over it_ , Harry almost stated, ignoring the way the thought summoned the pertinent image to mind. However, he noticed that Ron was glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, apparently waiting, and he said instead, "You do realize that's infernal text, don't you Hermione?"

"Merlin, Harry, don't be so-" Ron trailed off sheepishly, his ears turning red. Hermione dropped the book with a startled noise.

Harry glanced from one to the other, bemused. "Have you been rehearsing this conversation?"

A splash of pink colored Hermione's cheeks. Instead of answering, she fumbled with the demonic text, avoiding the eyes of both Harry and Ron. Opening it to the front, she said breezily, "Infernal? How can you tell? Have you been reading it?"

 _Sirius did, but that's not how I know._

There were many ways to answer that, the truth the stupidest among them. _So why not?_ He studied his friends with an accessing eye, and then replied in a deceptively light tone, "No. The same reason why I can't conjure Soulfire, I guess." _It explains so many things…_

Hermione blinked slowly in response, but Ron just gave him a nonplussed look. "What does being hopeless at light invocations have to do with recognizing demon language?"

"Very funny, Harry. Taking a Devil Arm doesn't make you a demon." She took out her wand, flicked it at the book, and murmured an incantation, frowning in surprise when the text took on a dull glow. "But you're right, this is infernal text. If you didn't read it, how did you know?"

"Lucky guess?" Ron drawled, and he and Harry shared a snort. There were no lucky guesses where devils were concerned. The redhead gave him a cautious look.

Hermione's frown deepened. "Harry, how did you know?"

Harry smiled thinly. "I dunno. Maybe for the same reason I'm still alive." Where for a human the killing curse was a death sentence, for a demon it was a spiritual bludgeon: hardly fatal by itself. "Freak, murderer, bastard – devil-spawn would be the natural next step, wouldn't it? You didn't honestly believe Dumbledore's story about _demonic energy resonance transformations_ , did you?" Both winced, their expressions giving them away. They had bought it, after all. He laughed. "Sirius would've known better…"

The namedrop bought a moment's silence before both Ron and Hermione erupted in stunned denial that pretty much only amounted to how little sense it made that Harry wasn't human. His snort of contempt made them pause, and Hermione spoke up again more slowly.

"It's not like it could be your mother, because your aunt's human, at least in the biological sense..."

Ron cut across. "But Dante's got to be human. He's a _devil hunter_ for Merlin's sake!"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Harry cut in dryly. They fell silent, staring at him with slightly lost expressions. "But no. Second generation half-breed, here." _And really, it explains so much about Dante. He's not a wizard, but he's definitely got power._

Ron broke the silence awkwardly. "If he's half-and-half… you think he's like Charlus Potter, then? I mean, his dad was human, but if he hadn't made that deal with Sparda, he wouldn't've been…."

"If Tiberius hadn't made that deal with Sparda, Charlus wouldn't've _existed_ ," said Hermione tartly. She looked uncertainly at Harry, who returned it impassively. The Potter family dirty laundry had taken on a wildly ironic feel after Dumbledore's revelation. "Honestly, I'd wondered if that might be why you had so much trouble with Soulfire, before…" The witch backtracked. "Perhaps an incubus or succubus? Sex demons tend to kill their human partners, but it's not unheard of for children to survive. It would explain why Dante chose to become a devil hunter."

It was a pretty good theory, but Harry couldn't help snickering. "I know Brown and Patil refer to him as a sex god, but does Dante really strike you as an incubus?" he asked, when Hermione scowled at him. "Really, the answer's so much more obvious. The fact that we actually know the answer makes it obvious – especially considering we don't know whether it was Dante Mum slept with or his brother."

"It was a Doppelganger devil?" Ron guessed, though his half-grin implied he wasn't being serious.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I think all of those were probably tied up playing substitute for the Black family."

"He's not from the Vie de Marli; they're insular and fairly easy to recognize, not to mention far more than one generation removed…" Hermione wasn't deterred from the point in discussion. "If I didn't know better, Harry, I'd think you were trying to imply that Dante's demon parent is Sparda."

 _Most infamous traitor in the history of the two realms_ , Harry thought, lips upturning to an ugly smile.

"You are." Ron sounded stunned, then thoughtful, while Hermione looked thunderstruck. "Of course you are. Who else would it be? Any other devil wouldn't be dramatic enough. Unless it was Mundus, I guess."

"Harry, I am your father," Hermione said faintly, but with a tone that suggested she was making a joke. She huffed when they looked at her askance and shrugged the comment off.

* * *

It wasn't until the day before they were due to return to Hogwarts that Dumbledore sent a message by: a solution to hiding Harry's bastard status had been procured, and Snape would be by in the evening to deliver it.

 _Snape, of all people._

The message was empty of any explanation of just what solution had been found, which would've been enough to leave Harry feeling anxious by itself; but the revelation that Snape knew about his familial issues, when he sat through several hours of memorial service coated in glamour charms to hide it, left him in the kind of mood which had even Ron tiptoeing around him carefully.

As the hour grew closer to the prescribed time of seven o' clock, the atmosphere in the Grimmauld Place common room grew more and more tense. Ron and Hermione's game of wizard chess slowed in tempo as they started glancing away from the board more and more often to check the time. Mrs. Weasley was fidgeting with her needlework by the fireplace; Ginny and the twins had left an hour ago, run off by the thick tension in the air.

"Knight to E4," he heard Ron murmur, followed by the gritting of Hermione's teeth. Two moves from checkmate, if the Muggle-born wasn't careful.

An echoed tick accompanying the second hand of the grandfather clock told Harry another minute at passed. One minute to seven, sharp. It wouldn't be long now, since while Snape was a failure at a great many things, punctuality wasn't one of them. A faint build-up of energy drew his eyes to the fireplace.

The flare of the flames as they surged up, burning Floo green, made everyone jump but him.

Snape appeared in the grate, his robes billowing in the flickering flames as he stepped out, the familiar expression of distaste already apparent on his face. His dark eyes swept over the welcoming committee, growing flinty at the sight of Mrs. Weasley, whose presence Hermione believed might stifle some of the professor's snide comments.

It may have worked, since the dour professor got straight to the point, sliding a long-fingered hand into an inner pocket of his robes and withdrawing a potion phial filled with glutinous red-brown liquid. "Potter. Your potion."

Moving stiffly, Harry plucked it from the outstretched hand, though he made no move to drink it. Instead he inspected it closely with his eyes as he swished the phial back and forth. So this was Dumbledore's 'solution'? _It looks like blood_ , he reflected. _Fitting, I guess._

"Just drink it, Potter," Snape snapped, swiftly losing patience. "The headmaster insists I remain with you long enough to assure there are no problems, and I for one have more important things to do with my time than waste it in your presence."

Harry cut off a derogatory comment roughly, feeling Mrs. Weasley's eyes on him. "And here I was, laboring under the impression I would be told just what I'm supposed to be drinking."

"The Headmaster has informed you of that already." The professor's expression turned snide. "He seems to think the Wizarding world has a use for a son of James Potter. Ironic, since the man himself couldn't produce one."

"That's uncalled for, Severus!" Mrs. Weasley cut in sharply, dropping her knitting needles onto her lap. "And it's a fair objection. It's any wizard's right to know what he's putting in his body."

Snape's lip curled in a sneer, but he seemed disinclined to press the matter with the older woman. "It puts nothing more in his body than he's had there for most of his natural life," he said. "It's a basic concoction passed down in pure-blood families to cover up _accidents_ ," a sneer and pointed look at Harry, "or to make up for _natural deficiencies_. In your case, James Potter adopted you _in loco paternis_ , becoming in all aspects your father. This is the same potion, modified to account for your age."

 _So I really was un-adopted._ Harry absorbed that silently, curling his fingers around the phial to hide the fact that his hand was shaking ever so slightly. He wasn't sure why. _Drink the potion, and it'll be like this whole bastard thing never happened._

Except that wasn't quite true. He looked up, meeting Snape's flinty expression.

"Drink the potion and be done with it, Potter," the professor said, irritation obvious in his voice. "I realize having James Potter as a parent is a terrible fate, but-"

- _shing_ -

Mrs. Weasley's scandalized shout wasn't enough to cover the sound of the glass phial shattering in Harry's fist. In the stunned silence afterward, punctuated by the dribble of potion from his hand to the floor, Harry spoke.

"You'd love that, wouldn't you. I take this potion, and you spend the rest of your miserable life gloating because you finally have something over a dead man. Because you'll be the only reason James Potter had a legacy." He breathed, absently aware of the tension in his body. All he needed was a push, and he would explode. Snape was still gaping. "I won't give you that."

Harry allowed his hand to drop, little shards of glass falling to the floor, and left the room.

* * *

END PT V: DAWNS THE LIGHT OF TRUTH


	6. down the rabbit hole

Notes: Back to school, now from a very different perspective. The changes just keep on changing. Bit of trivia, the animation for DTing has a few invincibility frames. The terminology is a bit gamey, but oh well. This is the first real showing of my interpretation of demons/devils as being psychic predators: they feed on the emotions of their prey, similar to dementors. Creatures that manifest bodies from sand or smoke seem unlikely to require conventional nutrition, and it does justify their MO for interaction with humanity as a whole, not to mention explains the game mechanic of taunting to increase the DT Gauge. Taunting provokes anger and embarrassment to feed upon. Also, I love the Weasleys. Even if it may not seem like it most of the time...

* * *

There were a thousand inquiring eyes on him during the welcoming feast. Harry didn't feel comfortable sitting with his back to the crowd, so sat facing them all, thankful that the Gryffindor table was one next to the wall. A thousand inquiring eyes, most of them looking at him with trepidation; Harry looked up from the bowl of black pudding he was systematically clearing to sweep the onlookers, forcing them to either meet his stare or drop theirs. To a man, they looked away.

"I think they're afraid of me, Ron," he commented wryly.

The redhead didn't pause in stuffing his face, just giving him a droll look. Well, duh, it said, why shouldn't they be?

"Fear and awe, I think," said Hermione. "You're a hero again. A demon slaying hero, no less, and all the glaring you've been doing probably isn't making them feel comfortable." She smiled, going on in teasing undertone. "The six inches of unexplained extra height probably help."

Harry snorted in response, but inwardly admitted she probably had a point. His decision to smash the adoption draught had so far been met with a stunning lack of consequences, unless one counted being slathered in ten layers of glamour charms. It took that many to hold them together for any extended period of time, since the charms kept inexplicably failing. His hair looked streaked with premature gray if one glanced at it the wrong way and the height was a lost cause if he moved around much.

It didn't make a lot of sense, but neither did getting un-adopted by a supposedly permanent blood adoption potion. Devil blood apparently didn't like being concealed.

Taking another bite, Harry looked up at the head table. Dante lounged at the near end, wolfing down his fifth slice of pizza, taking no notice of anyone around him. The resemblance between Harry and the devil hunter was so extreme it was mind-boggling, faced with it in more than photographs. _Just like your father, with your mother's eyes._

Harry averted his eyes to the wizard next to him, the new minister Scrimgeour's replacement for Defense professor. Dumbledore had earlier introduced him as Hit Wizard Wilhem Thompson, the same man that had been dispatched to Privet Drive the day of the first demon incursion. Built like a bear and hairy, he could've been Hagrid's younger brother. The wizard didn't look the type to get trampled by a bunch of Hell Prides, but Harry supposed appearances could be deceiving. His were, after all.

Feeling the weight of stares descending on him again, Harry gave the room a second irritated sweep. That seemed to intimidate most of the room into minding their own business for the remainder of the meal.

It was only when everyone had retired to Gryffindor Tower for the night and Ron and Hermione had left for prefect patrols that anything happened. Though Harry was left alone, the murmuring and stolen glances had swelled to a maximum, and he figured from experience that sometime soon there would be a flood of apologies; that had happened after the Heir of Slytherin ordeal as well. It was just a matter of how long it would take for the Gryffindors to elect a spokesperson.

And _who._ Harry flipped a page of the book he was reading, not looking up at the sound of approaching footsteps made unnaturally loud by the sudden quiet.

"H-Harry? Um… c-could we talk? Please?"

Very slowly, Harry raised his head. The boy in front seemed frozen momentarily, and there were clear signs of shame and misery on his face. Oh look, someone felt sorry. _Well, he should_ , Harry thought derisively. "I don't know, Longbottom. Can you hold a conversation without stuttering?"

Spots of red suffused Neville's cheeks, but he swallowed and valiantly tried to continue. The confirmation of Voldemort's return and hand in the demon outbreaks made him think about the way he'd treated Harry, reminded him that Harry had always been a solid friend, et cetera… "I was scared, I was stupid, and I took it out on you. I guess – I guess all I can say is that I'm sorry. I just want to be friends again."

After his spiel, Neville just stood there, eyes on his feet with his hands fisted at his sides as though facing judgment. The flickering light of the fireplace cast shadows on his face, but Harry could make out the sharp lines of wetness trailing down his cheeks. _He's actually serious_ , Harry realized, and he could do nothing more than stare. _He's really asking for forgiveness._

"… _the last Black is your godfather… crazy demon-obsessed bastards, the lot of them… and you're no better…"_

Harry closed the book with a _snap_ that made the entire room jump. Neville stayed where he was, trembling so badly he looked to be vibrating, but Harry didn't see him anymore; he was looking at his free hand, seeing instead of pale human skin the carmine plates of his other form. His devil form.

"… _crazy demon-obsessed bastards…"_

"You have no idea what you're asking," Harry said finally with a bitter bark of a laugh. He could use this. Twist the knife just a little, a seemingly offhand comment, and Neville would spend the rest of his life as Harry's little puppy, desperate to make up for his mistake. Except not, because the boy had already proved that when the chips were down he wasn't trustworthy. "What are you really after, Longbottom? You didn't seem intent on being friends when it wasn't stylish anymore. Worried it won't be one of your own pathetic attempts at a spell backfiring that finishes you off now? Tough luck." Neville stepped back, eyes wide and hurt, fresh tears spilling over, and Harry sneered. "Get out of my face. You're not worth my time."

He had Hermione and the Weasleys. He didn't need anyone else. Harry went to bed, reading by the faint glimmers of starlight and wondering in a small corner of his mind if he should enjoy hearing the echoes of Neville's sniffles quite so much.

With the morning come more whispers, galvanized by the events of the previous evening, but Harry ignored them as he made his way through the morning classes (double History and double Potions, with a still visibly livid Snape breathing down his neck) and eventually to Defense Against the Dark Arts. The designated classroom had changed with the switch in professors, and was now on the ground floor, not far from the Great Hall. It was large, the rows of desks in the center seeming to huddle together to keep distance from walls that were bare stone free of décor, and well lit by legions of floating candles high overhead. A blackboard acted as a boundary between the desks and a wide area of empty space. Beyond the walls shone with the subtle glow of a _Spongify_ enchantment, blurred by the nearer energy of a deflection ward.

There was an outbreak of excited whispers upon entering. Even if not all of the students recognized the spellwork of a basic dueling range, they remembered this room as the one chosen for Lockhart's ill-fated Dueling Club.

Thompson stood next to the blackboard, arms crossed, watching impassively as the class filed in. Harry found a seat in a middle row, flanked by Ron on one side and Hermione on the other. Once they were settled, the Hit Wizard gave them each a once-over, pausing contemplatively on Harry but moving on without comment.

"I'm going to start this off with a few comments," said Thompson finally. He uncrossed his arms. "One: I'm a Hit Wizard, not a teacher. The only reason I'm here is because the Minister wants to make up for Fudge's dicking around half a year, and there's a lot of places I'd rather be." Well, this had potential. "Two: I have no intention of forcing myself to read five hundred two-foot essays each week, so if you're a fan of bookwork, do it yourself. Preferably out of something besides that piece of rubbish my predecessor assigned as a course text." Several students sniggered or whooped quietly. Predictably, Hermione looked crestfallen at the lack of bookwork. "Three: get your wands out and get over here. Until I know what I have to work with, you'll be dueling."

A cheer went up, and the students scrambled to get their wands from their bags. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had wrist holsters, so they were upright to see the twitch of wild beard that was Thompson's wince. And why not – what idiot carried their wand in their bookbag? Harry thought he might like Thompson, even if the Hit Wizard did get beaten up by a bunch of Prides.

They followed Thompson to the edge of the deflection ward, where he told them to pair off. There was a rush to claim a partner that wasn't Harry, Ron, or Hermione. Since the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw class was odd in number, this left them alone.

"I'll take the winner?" Harry offered.

"Actually, Potter, I'll face you myself. Hit the field, we're going first."

Harry hesitated a second, thinking he had misheard, but Thompson gave him an impatient look and turned and crossed the ward line. He pulled his wand and followed, circling around to face him from a distance of twenty feet. This was middle range for a wizards' duel, and though Harry himself preferred a close range combat style, it was a good distance to engage an unfamiliar opponent.

The Hit Wizard nodded approvingly, drawing his own wand. "They say you took down an Abyss in the incursion in Surrey this summer, and followed up with killing a Doppelganger on Christmas. Let's see if they were right… _stupefy_!"

Harry was already dodging, his wand blurring through the motions of his general-use spell-chain: a reductor curse for structural damage, slashing hex for superficial, a burn to prevent quick healing, ice for further multilevel damage and a percussion curse to magnify it all. Thompson's automatic call of _Protego_ was almost too slow and shattered halfway through the barrage, and he could only move to minimize the damage. The Hit Wizard raised his wand hand to call for a pause, eyeing the half frozen, half shattered limb that was his left arm with a rueful head shake.

"Not one to mess around, are you Potter?" he said, smiling dryly. Thompson cast a few charms on the arm to stabilize it, and then bound it tightly, both to protect it from further damage and to prevent its use. "I guess we'll see some use of the Wiggenweld draught this class after all… On three, this time?"

Harry nodded wordlessly.

They moved as one. Serious now, Thompson fired a slashing hex and blasting curse in quick succession and ripped his wand down, muttering. Harry rolled forward to avoid the effect-impact spells, and with a quick " _Spongify_!" pushed off the stone floor before it formed spikes to impale him. _Reducto – exsectus –_ once he saw the hit wizard begin the motions for another shield spell, Harry stopped the chain. Jerk-snap, five loops like a rounded star, circumscribed… flick. " _Exsectus flagulatus longus duett_!"

Two extensions of vibrant maroon light, each fifteen feet in length, blossomed from his wandtip. Harry spiraled the holly rod, letting one of the whips detach and fly off. It coiled in behind his opponent, preventing Thompson from backing away further; the wizard's muttered swearword and gritted teeth confirmed for him that he was by preference a mid to long range fighter.

 _I suppose that explains the Prides_ , Harry thought distantly. _They do like crowding…_

Thompson slashed down in a freezing spell, burying the near stone in six inches of gleaming ice he made more dangerous with a light dusting of water from a mist spell, and batted off the _extensor_ slashing hex with a simple shield charm. It prevented Harry from closing any further: the hit wizard had likewise recognized his opponent's preferred combat. Good, but not good enough.

" _Exsectus effluo_ ," Harry murmured, twisting the remaining whip to three loopy segments and releasing it. The mass of leaking slashing hex blasted the center of Thompson's defense to lethally sharp shards of ice, and the wind spell he followed with focused the hail of daggers on the Hit Wizard. A beat later, once Thompson was consigned to a matter-only shield, Harry followed with a summoning charm and a knockback jinx; the combined force of the spells knocked the breath out of the Hit Wizard and might have cracked a few ribs. Either way, he was disabled long enough for Harry to leisurely unsheathe Sangreus and hold it to the new professor's neck.

"I win." The room was dead silent except for the polite applause of Hermione.

Thompson groaned, chuckling as he struggled to his feet, pushing the knife from his face. "I suppose you do at that." With some hobbling, he made it to the blackboard, at the foot of which Harry now noticed a small bag. From it the Hit Wizard withdrew not one vial of Wiggenweld healing draught but two. He scoffed them down and sighed, giving Harry a look. "That was pretty damn impressive, I'll admit it. Even if it looks like it's given you a bit of gray hair."

Harry started, hoping the sudden turn of his stomach wasn't obvious on his face. It hadn't even been an hour since he refreshed the glamour spells... "Must have been all the time I spent waiting for you to actually get a hit in, Professor," he rejoined, putting away his wand and his knife. Thompson snorted, and hopefully that was the end of that.

"Weasley, Granger. You next."

* * *

Harry shuddered, and shrunk down to himself. As always after exhausting the energy that sustained his devil form, what Hermione had dubbed his _Devil Trigger_ , the change back to human form was so sudden as to be somewhat painful, and accompanied by a disconcerting feeling of powerlessness. It was just as well that the Trigger regenerated more quickly when he indulged in violence, since the feeling made him jittery. More impulsive.

"You held it longer this time," Hermione said, copying the precise time down into a parchment sheaf and jotting down any other observations she found interesting. "The first time it was barely a second. After that under a minute, and now you're at three minutes and twenty-three seconds. If your Trigger keeps increasing at this rate you'll be flying in no time."

"How likely is it that it will?" Harry didn't turn around to ask. He readied his wand and Sangreus, casting his eyes back and forth the Room of Requirement's current mask, waiting for a demon to be belched from the depths. The sooner the better, and… there! He made a taunting come-hither gesture at the Hell Lust. "Come and get me!"

Hermione paused, presumably to roll her eyes. She didn't buy the idea that mocking enemies actually did make him feel better. Pity. "I can't say for sure… part-demons don't turn up much in infernal texts. But if I had to guess, I think you're in a temporary period of swift growth. Take advantage of it while you can."

He split the Lust down the midline with an _extensor_ slashing hex, spilling sand on the fleshy ground, and glanced around for another enemy. Preferably enemies, plural – solitary Hells were boring to fight, unless they were Greeds, and that was because those did nothing but call for friends if uninterrupted. With nothing forthcoming, Harry growled under his breath. In response, the Room called up a triad of towering pillars of fire, lightning, and water.

"I think Ron took the water portal," Hermione told him, sidling up beside him with her bag.

That had been, what, ten minutes ago? Long enough to clear one or two floors, maybe a couple more if he was abusing Soulfire. Which he probably was. "We'll take the fire portal, then," Harry decided. He had no desire to be anywhere near Ron when he was using light invocation. Hermione nodded, tightening her grasp on her wand, and they entered the fire pillar together.

The Room swam back into view, identical to the last detail to the previous platform one hundred floors below. Identical to every platform that made up the towering monument to demonic power that was the Room's current mask… the Bloody Palace. Harry tensed when the platform was flooded with a fog of scarlet energy, waiting in stillness while the floor's enemies began to take shape: Hell Prides, Hell Lusts, two hulking Hell Sloths, and finally, much larger, one he could only recognize from books.

"Hell Vanguard," Hermione breathed. A swish of her wand brought forth the glossy surface of an advanced matter shield spell.

Twice the size of the lesser demons, the Vanguard hovered in the air, held aloft by infernal power that caused the folds of its ratty black cloak to ripple in a nonexistent breeze. With an artful twirl, the demon thrust its electric-blue scythe into the air and yowled a challenge. That was the only warning before it lunged, and the Hell collective moved.

Harry stopped the Vanguard's charge cold with Sangreus. The knife looked particularly small and frail against the background of the enormous scythe. "I thought the Prides looked like dementors at first," he commented. "But you? You're practically a dementor's bigger, nastier brother… and I don't like dementors." He smiled, showing teeth, and shoved back with as much force as he could manage. It wasn't enough to unbalance the much larger demon, but it gave him room to aim. " _Effringo_!"

The Vanguard went flying back, crashing into several Prides. Ignoring it for the time being, Harry ghosted Sangreus along his forearm and then chucked it at a nearby Lust. As it shrieked, he blurred his wand through a familiar pattern, twisted on his heel-

 _crack_

-and wrenched the knife from the disintegrating demon's chest, bringing three feet of maroon energy to bear on the Pride behind it. It dusted, and Harry let the whip release, slicing through several more. One, two… five. The death shrieks made him smirk. He was feeling much better.

Behind, the Hell Vanguard righted itself and issued its challenge anew. Harry turned, wand and knife at the ready, but this time he took the offensive. _Reducto, exsectus, inflamare_ … a quick side roll saved him from the charge, and he dived in, stabbing deep with the bloody Sangreus. The demon's yowl of agony gave him a thrill. _Aquafrio – arduro_!

"Harry behind you!" Hermione screamed.

Harry heard the telltale hiss of a scythe moving quickly through the air. Annoyed more than anything else by the distraction from the downed greater demon, he reached for the rejuvenated Trigger and waited a fraction of a second before he _pulled._ The scythe met with transforming flesh and was rebuffed. In the still moment after, he leaped into the air and back-flipped off a platform of infernal energy to surge down with a vicious overhead strike at the Sloth that had sneaked up on him. Sangreus tore through the Hell like a hot knife through butter, and the severed pieces dropped to the ground before finally reverting to sand.

He sliced his hand through the air, summoning up a gale of wind, and took to the air. The wing-like flaps on his mid-back were not properly formed for long term flight, but for the duration of his Devil Trigger he could compensate with windshaping. He observed the flailing form of the Hell Vanguard, feeling nothing but contempt. The damage from the spell barrage and the seeping poison that was his blood were too much for the demon that inspired the story of the grim reaper. It wasn't dead yet, but it would be shortly, so Harry disregarded it and turned to the remaining lesser demons.

"That all you got?" he taunted. The sound was guttural, warped by vocal cords not meant to form human speech. "How boring. Looks like I'll have to make it a little more interesting for myself…"

In a similar way as when he Triggered, Harry stretched out his awareness to his shadow and the presence there. The energy caught, and the shadow warped, rising like smoke from the ground until a copy stood there, wing-flaps outstretched and knife at ready. The mind of the Doppelganger was quiescent, awaiting orders. With a flexure of will, it moved, and with swift, sure brutality destroyed the remaining enemies while Harry himself watched.

Hermione shook her head when it was over and he released the Trigger, letting the Doppelganger melt back into his shadow. "I understand it from the point of view of training," she said frankly, "but watching you just watch them get mangled is unsettling. You don't fight at all like that as a human," Hermione pointed out. "Or you didn't."

Harry had no response for that, except a slight feeling of unease.

* * *

They were in the Great Hall for breakfast when they first heard the news.

 _SECOND MINISTRY INCURSION LEAVES 11 DEAD, DOZENS INJURED_

Harry and Ron looked over Hermione's shoulders at the paper. Across the front page of the Daily Prophet under the grim headline sprawled an image of the Ministry atrium, the world-famous Fountain of Magical Brethren so much rubble strewn across the floor. As the image panned, it showed several ministry witches and wizards receiving emergency treatment by a St. Mungo's fast response team, and above the blood, dust, and debris, the Dark Mark hung in the air.

"This is going to put a crimp in attempts to establish the Ministry building as a safe zone from further attacks," Harry observed.

"No really?" said Ron, his sardonic tone making Harry roll his eyes. "I thought people would be flocking there with popcorn for a front row seat to the action."

"You certainly would."

"Can you two be serious for once?" Hermione huffed and proceeded to ignore them, tracing a finger along the lines as she skimmed the article. "The Boxing Day attack was led by Voldemort himself; that's the only reason they managed to set loose demons in the Ministry building. The wards they put up during the last war will destroy anything with the spells to induce a breach, so how…?" She trailed off. "It says a Death Eater hidden amongst the Ministerial staff was responsible for the breach…"

"Traitors. They screw up everything." Despite his words, Ron looked uncertain. He knew Hermione didn't get this worked up over nothing, and in response she simply looked at them, waiting.

Harry got it first. "This never happened last time, did it?" He scoured his memory and nothing came up, and then he continued at Ron's look askance. "Voldemort's the only one who knows how to induce breaching. He gives the Death Eaters enchanted items for single use, but he knows better than to pass on the spells… or he did."

Ron paled at the implication. "Why would he change his mind on something like that?" He turned to Hermione, and she handed over the paper without prompting. He settled into his seat, eyes zipping over the print.

"Why would he?" Harry repeated, frowning. "Giving his followers the spells is asking for one of them to try and overthrow him… they don't all have the brains not to sell themselves to a devil for power."

"You're certainly one to talk," said Hermione in undertone, smiling slightly at his eye roll. It faded quickly, though, as she glanced back toward Ron paging through the Prophet. "I… the only way I can make sense of this is if Voldemort no longer sees a threat in having his Death Eaters empowered by devils. And I really don't like that idea… Ron, what's wrong?"

The redhead had frozen, but now he lowered the newspaper to the table. He opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed and tried again. Emotions flashed across his face in quick succession. Confusion, shock, horror, even the faint stirrings of anger… "It's Percy. Percy's dead."

There was a still moment while the words sank in. Hermione stared wide-eyed in surprise, and Harry reached across her to seize the Prophet.

"Shouldn't you have been informed?" she finally whispered, apparently at lack for anything else to say.

Harry, having flipped to the obituaries page, scanned the short entry for Percival Ignatius Weasley. "The funeral's tomorrow," he reported. Seeing the next line, he gave Ron a startled look. "…arrangements made by Walter and Emmeline Clearwater?"

"That… that asshole…." Ron shuddered. Clearly hearing the words said aloud opened the floodgates, and he now struggled to contain the mixed emotions. He shoved away Hermione's arms when she went to try and comfort him with a hug. "That… he…" He stood abruptly and left without another word.

Hermione looked at Harry helplessly, but he just shook his head and went back to his food.

* * *

The Burrow was unnaturally quiet, or maybe Harry was just on edge. The ticking of the clock in the living room was unreasonably loud, as though trying to draw attention to the missing hands for Arthur and Percy stacked neatly below the clockface, or Mrs. Weasley's aberrant hand. Harry was more interested in watching the faces of the others in the room: Ron, eyes glassy, looking like one further hit would make him shatter; Hermione, staring down at her lap, at a loss for words; Fred and George, neither smiling for once, but exchanging speaking glances he couldn't quite interpret; and Ginny, her gaze lost in the shadows cast by the fireplace.

Very faintly, probably beyond the range of the human ear, Harry could hear muffled sobs still.

Or, maybe he couldn't hear it either, he considered, just mentally substituted the sound. Harry was very adept at picking up on misery nowadays. It gave him a little thrill, even when it was milked from the Weasleys.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, breaking the silence so abruptly that Hermione flinched. Ron and Ginny looked up at him momentarily, and then wandered back into their private worlds.

"We're going to quit," said George.

Fred explained. "Mum can't support us all." Not before, and certainly not now. "Somebody's got to take over, and with Bill caught up with Order business and Charlie not able to leave the reservation, we're the best choice."

"We have premises in Diagon Alley for the shop. Weasleys Wizard Wheezes – good name innit?" George stared at Fred to avoid the startled looks his other siblings gave him. Ron and Ginny still didn't know about Harry's decision to donate his Triwizard winnings, and they never would if Harry had his way. "Built up a lot of stock over the past year, so we're ready to open. No real point in taking NEWTs we'll never use."

"Mum would murder you for talking like that," Ginny interjected bitterly.

Ron laughed. The sound was high and hysterical. "Mum won't do much of anything now."

"Shut up, Ron," Fred said tersely, as Ginny's eyes teared up, and Ron snarled and stalked out.

Harry felt eyes on him and shot Hermione a quelling look. Neither were sure why they were here in the middle of a second major Weasley family crisis; they weren't invited to Percy's funeral, and Harry himself had no interest in going in the first place. Then Dumbledore pulled them from class and sent them by Floo to the Burrow. It was obvious from the start something at the funeral had gone horribly wrong, but they didn't know what. Well, except for one thing. He glanced sidelong at the clock, specifically the hand labeled Molly. It spiraled endlessly around the clockface, seemingly broken.

"What happened?" Hermione spoke up for the first time. She looked around cautiously. Though Ron had gone, the atmosphere was still precarious. "The headmaster didn't say."

Fred and George shared another private conversation in subtle head movements, unsure how explain what had happened, but their sister beat them to it. Not averting her watery eyes from the fire, Ginny said with a waver in her voice, "Mum's gone mad."

Distantly, Harry heard a sniffle. He repeated Hermione's question.

"It was… the funeral," started Fred, when it became clear Ginny wouldn't continue. "I mean, it was bad enough that he cut us out of the arrangements. It was like disowning us, and even if he was a prick-" The redhead wavered, swallowed, barreled on- "well, Mum was hoping he would come back after the first attack on the Ministry. You know, since we were right."

"But he didn't." Harry knew this much. Honestly, he expected it from the beginning. Percy was too proud to admit his mistake, and given what he wrote Ron after Mr. Weasley died Harry honestly thought the asshole deserved the messy end he got.

George shook his head in agreement. "That got Mum choked up enough, and she's… she's still not really put herself together after Dad. Still got his deathspell, hasn't decided what to do with it." He steadied himself, his eyes trailing over to the empty portrait frame in the corner, partly hidden by Ginny's chair, before he tore them away. "And then he died, and I think Mum thought she'd try and make up with his portrait, if he was gone."

"But Mrs. Weasley has a portrait frame," Hermione pointed out, more to keep the conversation moving than to inform. Wizarding portraits made her uneasy since she found out that they were essentially the recycled dregs of human souls. "I don't see how that should cause a problem… unless the Clearwaters wouldn't let her keep the deathspell?" It seemed reasonable, but the twins exchanged another look.

"That's the thing. There _wasn't_ a deathspell." Harry sat up, more attentive as Fred continued. "When they went to get it, you know how the memories all get spun into a ball that kind of glows? It wouldn't coalesce."

And that meant… "The demons got him. They didn't just kill him, they ate him up."

The twins nodded wordlessly. Though they were outwardly calm, Harry picked up the spike in their shared misery. They, like Ron, weren't quite sure how to feel; Percy was a bastard and turned his back on his family, but he was still their brother and to die like that, nothing more than spiritual food for the mad footsoldiers of the demon army…

Ginny spoke up again. "I want to hurt them. When I was little, I wanted to grow up and be just like Mum. I wanted her to be at my wedding, and if I had a girl I'd name her after her." Her voice wobbled. "But now I just want to hurt these bastards."

The tears she held unshed by sheer will were obvious in her tone: hard, determined, but weak and brittle. It would only take one blow to break her. Harry shook his head, though Ginny wouldn't see the motion. The Weasleys didn't need any more suffering. It was too easy, anyway. Fred and George turned to head her off, and Harry stood and excused himself quietly.

* * *

END PT VI: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE


	7. dance dance

Notes: BE WARNED. This is hands-down the darkest chunk of this fic. Things will start to look up from here for Harry and co, but this is where things hit rock bottom. There is some squick and some extreme mood whiplash. I've commented to some of you in review replies that Harry has some very Vergil attitudes... that's not necessarily a good thing. You have been warned. As an aside, for all that there have been some nasty stuff going on, I assure you everything has its purpose in the character arc of this fic. I don't do grimdark for the reason of grimdark; I happen to think that gets boring and depressing. But either way, on with the show.

* * *

The Valentine's Day weekend Hogsmeade visit came on the heel of a trying week with clear skies and unseasonably warm weather. Though Ron refused to be extracted from the Room of Requirement, Harry and Hermione made their way down to the village. In a way, it was a relief to be away from the redhead. Tantalizing aura of misery or no, Ron was growing more and more reliant on Soulfire and its sound-based partner, the Anthem of Angels, and less and less careful of his aim. Light magic fucking _hurt_.

They browsed the shops first. Hermione picked up a couple of textbooks she ordered from the local bookshop, and Harry refreshed his supply of parchment and potions ingredients. Afterward they went to the Three Broomsticks and relaxed in a corner with a butterbeer apiece. The conversation turned to pedestrian things like the O.W.L. examinations and their intended special project. It was peaceful.

And then it wasn't.

Harry felt the echoed torment before he heard the scream, and he and Hermione surged to their feet, heedless of the spill of butterbeer on the table and their robes as they dropped the mugs to seize their wands. Around them, the other patrons froze, horror painting their features, and they would've swiftly descended into a mindless chaotic frenzy of terror had Hermione not stopped them with a wide-range impediment charm. Harry gave her a look, _deal with the bystanders_ , and Hermione nodded _, I'll go for help too_.

Not wasting words, he ripped the door open, sealing it behind him with a spell as he surveyed the situation. The first thing he noticed was the fire: it moved and morphed like a living thing, here coalescing to a dragon to incinerate a shop, there becoming a wolf to stalk a pair of screaming witches with Hufflepuff house scarves. The shrieks magnified as the fire-wolf pounced, and the smell of cooking flesh joined the burning wood and suffocating scent of smoke. This was Fiendfyre, or not, because there was no way any wizard could control a fire invocation of this magnitude without losing control… A fire-based devil. It had to be. Harry bared his teeth in a grin. The Pegasus had gotten away, but this one wouldn't.

The second thing he noticed was the absolutely ridiculous number of lesser demons. Prides, Lusts, Sloths, Wraths, Greeds, a new one he thought might be Gluttonies, bloodgoyles, even a couple of the archer-type demons called Enigmas that he had only before met in the Bloody Palace.

"This may be fun," he said aloud to no one in particular. The humans in Hogsmeade's High Street were too busy dying to listen, anyway. He drew Sangreus, gave it an edge of blood.

Using Fiendfyre here would be pointless. It would be like trying to fight with a torch in a volcano. Jerk-snap, tri-loop, jab – instead, he buried a semicircle of seven feet radius of enemies under two feet of ice and summoned a gale. As the infernal fire turned the ice to superheated steam, dusting the captured demons in the process, the wind directed the scalding heat to the surroundings, setting alight another dozen. Knowing they were done for, Harry Apparated onto the roof of the Three Broomsticks, neatly avoiding a barrage of blue arrows. A quick thrust with Sangreus at the Enigma perched there assured that his temporary lookout was safe, at least for the time being.

The first objective here was, unfortunately, not tracking down the devil. Harry needed to locate and exterminate the Hell Greeds, as while they lived, the battle simply would not end. Similarly, the bloodgoyles needed to be dealt with quickly, since they multiplied periodically. The rest were simply annoyances.

Motion drew his eye. Harry tossed Sangreus, spearing a charging bloodgoyle through the middle, summoned it with a spell, and shattered it. He snorted. "Actually, let's be fair. You're all nothing more than annoyances." He scanned the crowd again. One… three… eight. Eight Greeds. Eight shots. Easy enough. He Disapparated.

The first Hell Greed was stationed by Scrivenshaft's quill and parchment shop, or rather, by the smoldering ruins that were all that remained of it. It was surrounded by Gluttonies, Lusts, and a single Hell Wrath. Harry dodged a Lust scythe-thrust and a stream of belched sand with a sideroll, focusing on the Wrath and blasting it with a single percussion curse, and Disapparated back to the lookout to verify that the Wrath's explosion took out the Greed. Too easy.

Harry picked off the rest of the Hell Greeds without much more effort and changed his focus to the bloodgoyles. Unfortunately he didn't have his broomstick, which limited the options he had to take out the aerial threats. They were vulnerable to ice, so he could pick them off with an _extensor_ freezing spell from afar, and Sangreus turned them to stone for shattering in one shot, but that would just be tedious. He considered the seething tension building under his skin. A couple of minutes, a wind invocation… Dumbledore gave him a stern warning to never transform in public, but seriously, what was one more demon in this infested hellhole?

He sidestepped an Enigma arrow barrage, nailed the distant attacker with Sangreus, and summoned the knife in a smooth motion. Screw it. Harry inhaled slowly to center himself, wrapping a layer of gale-force wind around his body, and took a running dive off the pub's roof. Devil Trigger came active, and he stretched out his wing flaps as wide as possible to catch the air and glide upward.

His wand vanished when he transformed, for some reason, but Harry had no trouble casting magic wand-free in devil form. Wheeling around to face a clump of several bloodgoyles, Harry extended a taloned hand and let lose a barrage of ice spells. From there it was a matter of speed and maneuvering as he chased the stoned enemies as they fell, shattering them with blows from Sangreus. Rinse, repeat. He did a few cartwheels in the air when he was done, just because, before launching into the crowd of lesser demons clogging up the street below.

Allowing himself to be surrounded, Harry summoned a whip of maroon light and whirled it in a circle about himself. The _extensor_ slashing hex reduced its targets to dust and he released it to mow down some more distant enemies. The trail of energy narrowly missed an approaching Hell Wrath. Baring his teeth in a savage smile, Harry jumped once and then again in the air to cross a knot of Gluttonies and Sloths.

Landing, he cut a hand across horizontally. The spell light trailed clawed fingers, forming a whip fifteen feet in length that curved, obeying his implicit desire to corral the approaching horde, and as the knockback jinx threw them into a pile, Harry directed an open palm at the Hell Wrath and verbalized a final spell: " _Effringo_."

The explosion of the Wrath's sack turned every one of the fallen demons to dust.

Harry smiled at the carnage, and but his satisfaction was short-lived. His body jerked, forcibly retaking human guise as the Trigger was exhausted. For a moment, he stood in the middle of the street, struck with indecision. Finish the remaining lesser demons to replenish Trigger and risk the fire devil escaping, or leave now and take it on without having devil form as a fallback?

 _I didn't need it for Sangreus or the Pegasus_ , he reminded himself, and decided to ignore the lessers. Well, ignore the lesser demons except for the remaining Enigma, which he casually skewered with Sangreus as he turned to leave. Archers were annoying.

There wasn't much of a question where to go. Harry turned up High Street and followed the sound of screaming up the hill of the Shrieking Shack. He hadn't gone far when the devil fire grew too intense to pass and the smoke too thick to see, but a wind invocation took care of both. The redirected hungry flames eagerly enveloped the one building that had so far escaped the blaze. Distantly he felt an abrupt upswing in terror, but Harry was too busy scanning the cleared path to pay it heed. The ground was littered with bodies in varying states of immolation. Some of them were little but ash and bone, while others were still vaguely recognizable; Harry noticed the blonde pigtails of Hannah Abbott despite the oozing ashen mask her face had become, but could only guess from the smoldering Ravenclaw badge that a different corpse was that of Roger Davies, this year's Head Boy. Fire had burned away everything but a thin layer of blackened connective tissue covering his skull. _None of them have faces…_

Ahead, where the hill crested, pillars of demonic fire shifted from snake to Chinese Fireball to cat-o'-nine-tails, traps of sentient and malicious flame. They left deliberate gaps as they changed, inviting an attempt at escape which would only lead to death. A single humanoid figure prowled around the traps, observing the captives. Humanoid, but not human: tongues of fire danced where its clothing should have been, trailing to the ground to thread its way to each fire pillar. Obviously, this was the fire devil, even if it wasn't anything like he had been expecting. With pale skin and silvery hair shot through with undertones of yellow and orange, it could have passed for a part-veela. A fire-natured succubus? Suddenly the burn patterns made sense: some died trying to escape the fire pillars, others from a kiss of death.

It stopped by a particular trap. The flames were drawn to its outstretched hand as if magnetized until all that remained were thin bindings that held the victim in place, turning tissue to slag in the process. Seizing the captive's hair to pull her head back, it stroked the witch's cheek with a hand wreathed in embers, unintentionally granting Harry a good look at her before it leaned in for a kiss. Or tried to.

Harry Apparated in, sending a blistering barrage of concussion curses at the devil. It was enough to blast the succubus from its feet and send it flying for yards, dropping its would-be victim to the ground but taking with is a fistful of smoldering ginger hair. At his feet, the witch moaned in pain, curling into a ball and clutching the gaping ashen hole that was her stomach. Harry felt his own stomach clench, feeling like an icy stone had dropped there.

 _Ron will never survive this._

This was Ginny. Ginny was as good as dead already.

" _I want to hurt them."_

Maybe – maybe if he still had _something_ left –

Harry made a split-second decision and acted before he could rethink it. Crouching down, he rolled Ginny onto her side, sheathed his wand, reversed his grip on Sangreus, and stabbed it deep between her shoulder blades. He ignored her agonized moan, turned the knife and removed it, and gently probed the wound with his fingers. As the witch's misery rose to its apex, he tore free a strip of cardiac muscle tissue, and withdrew his hand. The bit of muscle clasped in his bloody fist gave off a dull glow, shining feebly in a shade not much different from her father's canary yellow, before he cupped the deathspell and let the mangled tissue vanish into motes of light.

"And here I thought you would be one of those hero types," a deep, throaty voice cut in. Definitely female, definitely succubus. The devil canted her head to the side, hand on hip, and a playful pout curved sensual full lips. "Don't you know poaching is bad manners?"

"Sorry, lady, prior claim." Harry looked up from the warm yellow light and met the succubus' dark eyes, and found himself smiling at her without meaning to. It was true, if one considered Riddle's diary. "To be honest, I think you've had enough already. In the state you're in, you might not get home."

The succubus laughed, sauntering closer. The pillars of fire around her began to move, herding all of her captives together, presumably to minimize the amount of attention not focused on him. The air grew stifling as she approached and then began to circle, not getting too close. "Maybe you're a gentleman after all, then… what if I don't want to go home alone?" And suddenly she _was_ close, almost caressing his face with a fire-wreathed hand. The devil smiled coyly at him. "What if I want to take you with me?"

Harry prayed the coloring of his cheeks was indistinguishable from heat flush. Trying to play it off, he gave her a brazen look up and down. It probably wasn't the best idea, because _damn_. "It's a pity. I don't follow people home." He gave her another smile, this one with a bit of teeth. "But I'd be glad to take you out."

"I won't go out with just anyone," the devil responded, returning the smile, and it was like the air grew ten degrees warmer. Luckily, she turned away in that moment to stroll away, missing his swallow. Over her shoulder, she finished, "You'll have to show me your moves, first."

"My pleasure," he murmured. Harry slipped Sangreus back into its spine sheath. His fist closed on Ginny's deathspell. _You want to hurt them? Let me grant your wish…_ Though he had never done anything like this prior, he somehow understood what needed to be done. He held the fragment of soul in front of himself, his palm down, off hand splayed wide above it. Sweeping his left hand to the side, the canary energy followed, choosing a form to suit them both… four feet of nothing but blade.

Blood dribbled from where the hiltless sword sliced his fingers, and Harry laughed, giving it an aimless slash. Carmine energy rocketed off and scored a gouge five feet long and one foot deep into the ground of the hill. "Why not? I haven't tried these out yet."

Then the time for talk was over.

Harry jumped over a spherical wavefront of fire, and then again at the apex of his leap when the flames tried to follow. He drew his wand with his off hand. Typically with Sangreus he would block and use _extensor_ spells for offense, but the hiltless sword's length made that tactic potentially unwieldy. Luckily he had other options.

Jerk-snap, tri-loop, jab, swish – an orb of ultracold ice barreled at the succubus, and Harry followed it down. As expected she dodged but not enough. The _Homus_ advanced freezing spell curved to follow her and hit home, covering her bare torso with a thick layer of frost. Taking advantage, Harry turned on his heel and levied another slashing hex at his foe, dashing close for an opening strike – one, two, three, and then he jumped up and back again to avoid the lashes of a flaming cat-o'-nine-tails. Fire whips, really? That was _his_ gimmick.

More wand motions and a second _Homus conglaciare_ went flying the succubus' way. Savvy to the technique now, she waved a fire-wreathed hand and melted the ice bullet in the air, but it still worked as a distraction. He Apparated close, saw her dark eyes widen in surprise, and nailed her with a bludgeoning curse. Again, and he was behind with a blasting curse, and again, in front with a slashing hex.

One last and he reappeared above her, holding the hiltless sword in a two-handed grip, and slashed down savagely with all the momentum provided by gravity. The force and the pain drove her to her knees.

"I think that look suits you better!" Harry taunted, moving into a horizontal slash that knocked the fire devil onto her ass. Her fingers dug into the dirt, and he jumped into the air again and hiked out of range as she became the center of a circle of lava a dozen feet across.

It was about time this finished. He barraged the lava lake with freezing spells, more to keep the succubus busy and fill the air with steam than to damage her. The hiltless sword he angled down, the end nearly touching the scorched earth. Harry wasn't willing to go near the lava, so the idea was to remove the fire devil from her safe zone, dealing enough damage to keep her from recreating it before he could finish her. And if a casual slash from a distance could make a mark that put a slashing hex to shame, what could it do with a little focus?

Glow, apparently. When the blade was entirely carmine, Harry tore it diagonally through the air. The energy sliced cleanly through the cloud of steam, followed by a scream of pain. A quick wind spell cleared the air and he apparated several feet to front of where the succubus was attempting to regain her footing. She looked up, breathing hard through her mouth, and the narrowing of her eyes was the only warning before she lunged at him.

It was enough to swing the hiltless sword out in front of him, and the fire devil impaled herself directly below where a human's heart would be. She gasped in pain, a gasp that turned into a painful chuckle. A pale hand wrapped around the blade.

"Well, well, those _are_ some moves," said the succubus weakly, giving him a saucy smile. Breathing in to gather herself, she pushed the blade further through her body, close enough to caress his cheek despite his instinctive flinch. "You'll make quite the proper devil in time… What's your name?"

"Harry," he said simply, and made to remove the hiltless blade from the succubus' chest. Her hand closed in on it with a surprisingly strong grip, pulling herself in even closer.

"You can call me Eris," she murmured almost into his ear. "We'll have to get to know each other… very well."

Eris leaned back, chest shuddering, and then exploded into a pillar of fire. It wrapped itself around him, warm like a thick blanket but not stifling, filling him with a rush of energy almost too much to contain. Finally, a streamer of flame lanced out and coiled around the hiltless sword, a molten-bright sheath. Harry looked at it nonplussed, then shook his head.

"Whew, it's hot out here."

…he knew that voice. Inexplicable dread welling up, Harry turned to the former site of Eris' captives to see a scarlet duster and snowy-white hair parked on top of a large boulder. Dante. Dante sniggering, and who wouldn't be – he could feel heat rushing to his cheeks.

"Oh laugh it up," he groused. "Don't tell me you've never fought a succubus before."

Oddly, that seemed to amuse the devil hunter further, but he dropped the topic, staring at Harry a look that was half smirk, half frown. It was a bit unsettling. "You know kid, I'm know I'm cool and all, but copying the hair is a little much, don't ya think?" The serious tone belied the light words.

The hair? …oh fuck.

* * *

Harry left the headmaster's office with Eris and the hiltless sword in hand, once more coated in layers of glamour spells. The scarce few students he passed in the hallways moved aside to let him pass. Some of them hesitated, opening their mouths to speak, but stopped at the look on his face. Others stared with consternation at the flame-wreathed sword he had propped on one shoulder. He could read their expressions clearly: _What happened? What's wrong?_ He was in no mood to explain to them that thirty-seven Hogwarts students were dead, that most of Diagon and Vertik Alleys were reduced to rubble, and that Azkaban Prison now stood empty save for a thousand corpses and a pack of ravaging demons.

 _What does that make the death toll?_ he wondered. _Just Azkaban beats the last war altogether…_

An important thing about war in the magical community was that it wasn't really feasible to wipe out one's opposition, as there weren't many witches and wizards as it was. In the first war, there were only about two hundred wizard deaths in a ten year period, but with the recent killing spree… Harry shook his head at nothing. Nothing Voldemort had done since Christmas really made any sense, tactically. It didn't bear brooding over.

So what to do? Dumbledore said Hermione was in the Hospital Wing, helping Madam Pomfrey with the injuries that weren't severe enough to take to the overtaxed St. Mungo's. Harry would only get in the way if he went there. Another option was Ron, who probably hadn't left the Room of Requirement in all the time they had been gone. He wouldn't know about Ginny yet. Someone had to tell him, and Harry had more to do than that.

Harry tightened his grip on Eris' warm fire and the lethally sharp blade the sheath concealed. The fire succubus' chosen form was a bit inconvenient, since he didn't intend to keep Ginny's deathspell for long. It was powerful and useful, but it wasn't his.

Besides, the only remaining alternative was waiting for Dante to extricate himself from his meeting with Dumbledore and come demanding an explanation.

 _Room of Requirement it is._

After a detour to the kitchen, Harry ascended to the seventh floor, found the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, and slipped into the Room of Requirement with food in one hand and his wand holding up the _caelum praesidium_ energy shield spell with Eris clinging to his back. His paranoia was rewarded when the Bloody Palace swam into view, flooded with raging white fire. The dark shapes of lesser demons twisted and flailed as they were reduced to cinders by the onslaught, though the echoes of their agony were muted by an unearthly refrain that made Harry cringe despite his shield.

Ron stood in the center of the platform with his back to the door, directing the Soulfire with slight waves of his wand like a conductor. Though Harry couldn't see it, he knew the redhead's mouth was open in a long exhale of breath to power the sound-based Anthem. He thought it looked rather stupid, like everything else to do with the spell; Mrs. Figg's cats in heat were more musical than the Anthem of the Angels.

Eventually the Room stopped providing targets for the light magic to feed on, and the invocations of fire and sound died away. There was no sound but the crackling of the portals and Ron's heavy breathing as Harry let his shield dissolve.

"Overkill much, Ron? I'm beginning to wonder if you remember how to duel." Harry lazily bent out of the way of the instinctive blasting spell his friend sent his way out of surprise and held out the food as a peace offering. "And dear Merlin, use a refresher spell. You reek. Hungry?"

Ron made a grab for the box, but Harry pulled it back out of reach. The redhead gave him an annoyed look, but his rumbling stomach took the decision out of his hands and he swished his wand, instantly clearing up the sweat soaked into his robes. It was probably his first meal since breakfast that morning at half six. "Pizza, Harry? Really?" he rejoined between bites. "Dante's rotten taste in food is hereditary now?"

"Eight flights of stairs," said Harry, taking a slice for himself and looking away from the grisly sight. Ron's table manner could cow any demon into submission. "Dumbledore's annoyed at me already, so I didn't want to use the wind invocation indoors. Would you have preferred corned beef sandwiches instead?"

"Don't even joke."

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Ron was too hungry to waste time talking, and Harry was content to delay the inevitable. Only when the box was empty and faded away with the table did Ron give him a considering look.

"That sword have anything to do with why Dumbledore's not happy?" he asked.

"Something like that. I went Devil Trigger in the middle of Hogsmeade. No one really noticed, but it blew my cover with Dante." Harry automatically reached back and curled his fingers where the sword's hilt should have been. Despite the feather-light touch the skin of his palm broke open and bled. "You missed it, Ron. Full scale attack, led by a devil and everything. It wasn't pretty."

"Voldemort opened a breach in Hogsmeade?" Ron looked stunned. "What the… where was Dante?"

"In London. Demons hit the twin alleys first, then here, then Azkaban. Dumbledore thought it was timed deliberately to draw him away so the other attacks would last longer." It had probably maximized casualties, at least. Harry frowned. Meaningfully or not, he was delaying. He drew the hiltless sword from his back, sliding it free of Eris and offering the dull edge to his friend. "Here. This is yours."

Ron gave him a weird look and pushed the blade back. "Harry, mate, I'm a wizard. Swords aren't my thing."

"It's not a sword," Harry said, rolling his eyes. As if that weren't obvious. "Ginny's dead, Ron. This was all I could salvage. She's your sister, so it's yours." He offered it again. Ron needed to take the sword before Harry changed his mind about giving away a useful weapon.

Ron started to push it away again but went very still. "That's not funny, Harry."

"I'm not joking, Ron, just take it." This was getting annoying.

"Ginny's dead."

The redhead stared at Harry, and eventually his face emptied of color as he realized that no, it wasn't a sick prank. Then his blue eyes lowered to the sword. Visually, it wasn't that appealing, just a slab of steel lethally sharp on one side. The light from Eris' flames cast a reddish tint on the pale metal, and his gaze canted to the fiery sheath, trembling. Eris, the sword, and back to Harry.

"You sick _bastard_ ," Ron said finally, in barely more than a whisper, and shoved Ginny's deathspell away.

Taken aback, Harry tried to get a fix on what Ron was feeling. Using light magic left the redhead muffled to Harry's fine-tuned misery senses for several hours, but if he concentrated… Ron went for his wand, and caught flat-footed, there was no way for Harry to dodge in time. The blasting curse caught him in the chest and sent him flying to crash down painfully at the platform's edge. The hiltless sword escaped his fingers and clattered on the ground between them.

A quick motion of his now-empty hand brought up his wand and a shield charm, and Harry rolled upright. "What the hell's your problem?"

"My problem?" Ron repeated. He laughed, high and hysterical. "You ripped my sister's soul out to give me as a present and you _want to know my problem_?"

Harry frowned. When he put it like that… "She was as good as dead already! Would you rather I let Eris eat her, so you'd have nothing left but a corpse?" At least this way there was something left. _Unlike with Percy._

"There's never anything left but corpses!" Ron screamed, raising his wand and swishing down in a motion Harry knew well to be wary of. Ghostly fire spilled onto the platform, hungry as ever for demon flesh. "The least you can do is give them _respect_!"

"She wanted to hurt them," Harry argued, redirecting the Soulfire with a wind spell. "How is that not respect-" A blistering barrage of curses rained down and shattered his shield, and Harry had to side-roll to avoid them, taking the risk of nearing the deadly magic. He felt a surge of anger. If Ron didn't stop being an idiot, then he was going to get his ass kicked.

Soulfire exploded outward. Harry leaped into the air to evade, turning slightly to dash over Ron's head and land lightly across from the assault. He adjusted his grip on Eris, slamming her curved bottom to the ground. Her touch turned the stone red with heat that shot out at a flexing of will to meet the light magic shockwave. Soulfire clashed with Fiendfyre, inversely correlated fire invocations resonating and magnifying in intensity-

Harry jumped up once and then again into the air, calling up a wind invocation to give him extra height to escape the explosion. Ron wasn't so lucky. His hastily-cast shield shattered like glass in the face of the out-of-control resonant. His scream seemed to go on forever.

When he dropped back down to the ground, Harry blew the smoke away with a quick spell and gave a sigh of relief. Ron shuddered in his fetal curl on the ground in the wake of terrible agony, but there were no visible burns. A flame-freezing charm, then, since the tickling sensation it gave the user was proportional in intensity to the strength of the fire stimulus. Not far away lay Ginny's deathspell, completely unaffected by the explosion that would've turned ordinary steel to slag.

"Ron?" he said evenly. "Are you okay?"

"Shut up," the redhead snarled, forcing himself to uncurl. He stood, nearly toppling over due to the trembling of his limbs. Ron met his eyes for a second, anger and disgust chased by betrayal clear on his face. "Just shut up." And, slowly and painfully, he left.

Harry watched him leave, offering no further comment or assistance. Then he walked over to the hiltless sword and picked it up, returning it to Eris' embrace, considering it silently. Betrayal? How was salvaging a part of a loved one betrayal? If he had anything left of Sirius...

He would decide what to do with it later. For now, he wheeled around and took the fire portal. Like hell was he dealing with Dante after _this_.

* * *

END PT VII: DANCE DANCE


	8. darkest before dawn

Notes: And things begin to turn. It's on the short side and not the most actiony but very important. Here we get a bit of backstory explained, more context for some of the worldbuilding, and another boss fight. (I was a bit sad no one commented on Eris last chunk, but oh well.) Also, I may be poking fun at the settings of DMC1 and DMC3 a little with this. You'll see what I mean.

* * *

One good thing about being seen as a hero again following Christmas was that the obvious schism that developed between Harry and his friends after Valentine's Day was greeted with confusion from the masses as opposed to mass gloating. It didn't help the case that Ron responded to any attempts at commiseration with extreme prejudice, avoiding detention the first time due only to Sprout's soft-heartedness, or that Hermione avoided everyone, her face locked in a perpetually pensive expression.

It was in this time period that Harry really began exploring his demon-granted powers. Although his first kill, Sangreus, had left behind a Devil Arm, the demon had barely progressed past its origin as an Abyss; that the weapon had no power beyond its mundane utility as a knife was to be expected.

The Doppelganger, summoned up from Harry's shadow, was different. Harry noticed the first time that calling it out was not much different than spawning a Draft double, minus the nausea and the spinning, and it turned out that was not a coincidence. The Black family, however they did it, pulled up a piece of Doppelganger devil with every Draft they brewed, which explained a lot: why they were always twins, why they went mad, and why the usually relatively-docile-for-demons species would specifically target and tear apart a Black given half a chance. Fire demons, like Eris, did the same and worse to any wizard stupid enough to call up Fiendfyre.

No demon liked a power-thieving asshole, and wizards were pretty good at it. _Being assholes, that is._

The foot path he was walking was a good, if minor example. One of Voldemort's lackeys had to have walked it only a day prior, but it was overgrown with thorns waist-high despite that, with signs of accelerated growth.

Harry leveled the foliage with a low-powered blasting curse and went to twirling his wand about his fingers. He supposed it was possible the master of the manor he was about to break into had fixed up the thorns himself, but it was very unlikely. Unless it was a result of the wards, since it was equally unlikely the lackey had ever left.

It had been nearly a century since anything left Potter Manor alive, after all.

The manor's gates towered over him, nearly four times his height, but the paint had faded and rust degraded any effect of intimidation they may have had in years past. They opened on their own by magic as he approached. Harry stopped at the threshold.

"So this is it," he said aloud. His ancestral home, if only by adoption. There were three lines of dark windows set into the face of tan stone and two towers symmetric about an open archway beyond which he could make out a green courtyard. Beside the archway were two man-sized puppets in ragged jester's clothing, lying limp against stone like sentries fallen asleep on the job.

Harry walked in.

The Marionettes came alive.

Harry sidestepped the knives they threw, flexing his wand to a secure grip and firing a pair of blasting curses. The Marionettes exploded, releasing a wash of magical energy; a line of runes, previously invisible, glowed as the energy was absorbed, and suddenly instead of two sentries, there were twenty: some with yet more daggers, some with swords, some with axes and even a couple – _are those shotguns, seriously?_

"I guess I'm getting a warm up after all…" Harry slipped into a dueling stance, drawing Sangreus to bat away some daggers coming this way as he dodged the bullets. _And maybe more than that._ Now that he looked, the entire front of the manor was patterned with runes. " _Exsectus flagulatus_!"

The _extensor_ slashing hex turned the nearest Marionettes to scrap leaking magic, which triggered a third wave. With nearly forty Marionettes active, there wasn't much room for them to maneuver, let alone throw or shoot, and Harry simply kept swiping until the manor's trap runes had released their full payload before he returned Sangreus to its sheath.

Densely packed enemies with nowhere to run? Densely packed, _flammable_ enemies?

Harry smirked, taking the hiltless sword in hand. "Come on, Eris, give me a show."

She left nothing but ash behind.

The archway led to a covered path surrounding the courtyard. At each of the path's four corners, an elaborately carved chess piece stood at attention, a pawn going by its crossed swords. Harry eyed them somewhat warily after the trap outside. The Potters were well known for being accomplished at Transfiguration, and this Manor was a relic of an incarnation of the family that peddled in demons at a level even the Blacks never dared.

Unlike outside the manor, the courtyard showed obvious signs of care. Across from the entrance was an elaborate topiary chessboard, caught in the end stages of a game where black was trapped and white was about to finish him. Harry considered it for a moment, trying to think of a way for black to save itself. Chess was Ron's thing (he had to be good at _something_ , Harry thought bitterly), but Harry wasn't terrible and he couldn't think of an escape.

 _Maybe that's the point_ , he thought. _'We've got you now.'_ Kind of clever, but if that was true it made the older Potters showboats by default.

Past the doomed game, on the side of the likely white player, was a statue that towered over two floors. It was an older man, cloaked in old-fashioned wizard's robes, hands outstretched in benediction as he looked down with three eyes at the courtyard and a small altar with three obvious sockets in a triangle shape.

This made several things clear. First, whatever devil Tiberius had been entangled with, it was old, as in contemporary-of-Sparda old. Those were the type that had the patience and peculiar sadism to create devils' traps of their residences: if an attacker got through the puzzles and periodic assaults, they were strong enough and smart enough to be useful servants. Second, whatever devil Tiberius had been entangled with, it was one very close to the devil emperor Mundus. That it had the confidence to invoke the three eyes made that painfully obvious.

The combination of those two facts meant nothing good for a half-breed descendant of Sparda, even if Harry had never met the guy and honestly didn't know what to think of an infamous traitor and backstabber being responsible for his existence.

 _And third…_ Harry walked over to the altar, dipping his fingers into the cavity that made the head of the triangle. They came out dark red and sticky with dried blood. Third, whatever devil Tiberius had been entangled with, it knew he would be coming and what for, and it was the type to make a game out of it.

And obviously, tormenting a catatonic insane woman wasn't enough fun.

* * *

Between the traps, the puzzles, and the fact the building layout was so screwed up that a door on the first floor opened up to the attic on the other side of the manor, it took a couple of hours of work to complete the fetch quest the devil had set. The two enchanted orbs, Dream of Yesterday and Hope for Tomorrow, shone blue-green from where they were inserted into the altar; they had taken about an hour to acquire, most of it spent mowing down gauntlets of Marionettes and Bloody Maris and the occasional Plasma or Fetish.

However, placing them into the altar had triggered a change to the entire manor, and the rest of the time had been spent on solving mind-bending puzzles while pestered by demon chessmen and terminated with a massive battle with an entire chessboard – wizard's chess on a demon scale. Victory netted him the final orb, the Trials of Today, but by now Harry was feeling more than a little aggravated by the devil's game as he slotted it into place.

As the third orb clicked into place, a second transformation began to shake the courtyard. Unlike before, when the entire building had shaken as though undergoing an earthquake, the change seemed localized to the courtyard itself. Harry took a step back from the altar, it too close to the vibrating Mundus statue for his peace of mind, palming his wand.

Energy began to arc over the altar. Demonic energy, like that which powered his devil transformation – like called like and Harry could feel it creeping over his skin. The blush of heat triggered a half-transformation before Harry mentally stomped it down, shredding the ragged remnants of his glamour spells. That was fine, since any devil would've known he was under an illusion from scent alone, but he didn't need wasted devil trigger with the fight that was coming up.

With that, the altar seemed to melt into the ground, becoming a silvery puddle almost like a Pensieve memory which reflected a very, very different place than the manor courtyard.

A portal. Not too surprising. Just one more hoop to jump through – literally. Keeping a firm grip on his wand, Harry jumped.

The world beyond was white. Harry gave the surroundings a brief study: pale gray stone, white in places with nonexistent frost, surrounded on all sides by a thick layer of clouds which cast a pale light over everything. The only splotch of color came from a platform a bit off in the distance, a dash of fire engine red: Mrs. Weasley's hair, her crumpled form lying next to a seated human figure with messy black hair, pale skin, hazel eyes, and a facsimile of wizard's robes.

Tiberius Potter's devil looked pretty much like a twin to Tiberius himself. Hell, a year ago seeing this devil would've given Harry fits over how much it resembled his own father. It was probably intentional; if Tiberius hadn't got cold feet at the last minute, every Potter after him would've been devil brood, half-breeds, sworn to the service of Mundus. That sort of insanity was more easily swallowed when it looked familiar. Instead, he'd panicked and made his pact with Sparda.

It saved his humanity and his pregnant wife and cost him nearly everything else, all just to seal this one devil.

Harry ignored the feeling of eyes following him as he made his way to the platform where Mrs. Weasley and the devil waited. The stairway vanished when he stepped off it.

"So you're the Harry Potter I was informed to expect," said the devil. Its voice was as human as its appearance, and sounded contemplative. "But you're not one of mine, whatever name you wear. Pity that. I had anticipated disciplining a wayward grandchild, and instead I find myself confronted by a descendent of Sparda." A slow smile.

"Not so shocking. There's a few of us running around," Harry said, carefully keeping his tone nonchalant. Sangreus and his wand were both ready in his hands. The devil seemed more interested in talking than fighting for now, but it wouldn't last.

Mrs. Weasley was crumpled against the devil's seat, her eyes wide but unfocused, mumbling. The Death Eater that delivered her here had not been kind, Harry noted with a spark of anger. There were bruises purpling her face, and her wrists were ruddy with rope burns. Conjured bindings, probably, which died with their caster.

"I take it this is yours?" The devil gestured to Mrs. Weasley. To Harry's surprise, she noticed the attention enough that instinct made her shrink away from it. "Mr. Macnair delivered her a day ago with his message. I believe she was intended as a gift, but I think arrangements can be made. Tell me Mr. Potter, have you ever heard of the game, _patolli_?"

Harry shook his head warily. This demon was too polite. Insults and trash talk he could handle, even fire back, but this?

"Patolli was a game given to the Teotihuacanos of Mesoamerica in the late Expansion Era before the treason of Sparda," said the devil, not surprised by his lack of knowledge. "A game of war, whose players placed their treasures, even their own freedom, in the hands of chance. It is largely lost."

"I didn't come here for a history lesson. Get to the point."

The devil sighed, but it was with a look of amused tolerance. "I would have you play a game with me, Mr. Potter, a devil's game. Indulge me, and win or lose you may keep your human pet."

 _A trap._

"I may be young, but I'm not an idiot." Harry knew when he came here, following the instructions in the ransom letter, that there was no escaping without a fight. His mouth curled into an unconscious smirk. A devil's game; a contest of strength. If he lost, this whole conversation wouldn't matter. "Let's hear the rules of this game of yours."

The devil rose, a satisfied cant to its lips. A negligent motion with one hand vanished the chair, or – no. The chair, and Mrs. Weasley with it, was suddenly elsewhere. They hadn't moved; it was more like the intermediate space had stretched. Harry felt a flicker of unease.

"If you are anything like your forebear, then too many rules will only ruin your fun." It walked toward Harry, but, paradoxically, seemed to get further away. The platform was larger, and where before it had been plain gray stone it had taken on the checkered pattern of a chessboard.

The devil stopped on a white space. Harry looked down. Sure enough, the stone below him was a fathomless black that swallowed his shadow. On reflex, he gave a mental poke toward the muted presence of Doppelganger. Still there.

"Then we play to the end, no holds barred?"

"Now, Mr. Potter, I am the Gamemaster. This is my game. These are my rules." The devil's tone was chiding. "And I see no reason to disallow resignation. Only a poor player refuses to acknowledge an inevitable defeat."

If it weren't obvious already what the devil wanted, it would be now. Eris had 'resigned.' The Doppelganger had 'resigned.' That was what devils did, the system Sparda had turned on its head: life, in return for service.

Harry let it go. So what if 'resignation' were allowed? He would rather die. "An end, then. Either way, we finish this." He narrowed his eyes, seized by a sudden suspicion. "And until this is done, Mrs. Weasley is not to be harmed or threatened."

"It would be in poor taste to place our wager into jeopardy." Despite the words, there was something in the devil's face that told Harry that adding that stipulation had been a very wise choice. A kind of rueful amusement. "Very well. Until the conclusion of our game, the human is safe."

Screw white moving first. "Then what are we waiting for?"

Harry chucked Sangreus at the devil and brought his wand to bear.

* * *

This was a mistake. A very big mistake.

It should have been obvious, given the strong affiliation the Potter family had with Transfiguration and the variety of enemies populating Tiberius' domain, that the devil was a world-shaper. Doubly obvious seeing that the devil had done it in front of him twice. And it had been obvious, really, but that didn't change the fact that Mrs. Weasley would die if he didn't act.

At this rate, all Harry was going to accomplish was dying with her.

Harry sucked in a deep breath, coughing up a knot of clotting blood. He set his feet, sweeping his wand in an arc that separated an incoming gout of superheated plasma into two that flew past him harmlessly on each side – no, they redirected, curving to recombine at his position. Cursing, and knowing better than to try dispelling the attack entirely, Harry slid into a half-step of Apparation, holding the transfer until the plasma dissipated. In that interim state, the devil wasn't capable of warping his personal space back into the line of fire. The strain made him reel when he materialized, and when local gravity decided to triple, sent him crashing to the ground.

 _Merlin… be damned_.

Harry panted as he forced himself back upright. He shot a blurry glare in the devil's direction.

His wand arm was shaking with tiredness, but the physical fatigue was nothing compared to the searing soul-deep exhaustion that was creeping up on him the longer he fought. Could someone really become magically exhausted? It was beginning to hurt to even cast spells.

The air took on a distinct scent of ozone. Static made Harry's hair stand on end as he slashed his wand upright, molding stone into iron to draw away and ground out a lance of violet lightning as it formed. Cracks feathered the chessboard battlefield. The shadows in them rippled, quicksilver, and the electricity snaked along them as they spread, each curving in at Harry. He drew another line, horizontal, and a thick layer of rubber intersected the lightning. The rubber turned to water, hissed and spat with electric charge. There was no time for another response. Harry Triggered, and let the attack bite uselessly at transforming skin.

The Gamemaster watched with interest, turning Sangreus in its hands. It hadn't moved from its spot since the battle began. "Impressive," it commented.

Harry sustained Devil Trigger long enough to use his wings to overcome the heightened gravity in a leap that took him into the air and away from the electrified stone. His lip curled. The devil even sounded sincere. _Good job, Harry! You're getting your ass kicked, but your enemy's impressed with you!_

 _Think, Harry, think._ He couldn't keep this up forever.

The devil was a world-shaper. Harry was in the heart of his domain. Therein lay the problem: he simply couldn't reach the bastard. Harry was reasonably certain he could take out the Gamemaster with a blast of Fiendfyre, or even immobilize it enough with a _Conglaciare_ to finish the job with Ginny's deathspell. This wasn't Mundus. The devil wouldn't play keep-away if it could apply its powers to itself.

Harry was a wizard foremost, but magic was of no use here. What else did he have? Chucking Sangreus was the closest he'd come to hitting the devil so far.

Swish, tri-loop, jab – casting on autopilot, Harry summoned a cone of ice and paired it with a wind spell. His free hand found the hiltless sword, and Eris slid free. Demonic fire followed the simpler spells, and for a second, the devil was hidden from view by smoke and steam. Blood welled up from Harry's palm as he swung the sword in a horizontal slash, and carmine energy split the air.

Harry Disapparated quickly. The magic burned.

The ice rained down on his previous position. The carmine energy broke apart halfway to the target, the space it occupied rent down the center, leaving the devil unharmed.

Shifting space was just unfair, Harry thought bitterly. But not against the rules, such as they were. If he survived this, he was never going to jump so quickly into a duel, inevitable or not. The only real rule here was-

As if in response to his choice of attack, the temperature of the air began to plummet. Moisture hung suspended, tiny drops of crystalline vapor like a fog. The chill sank into the stone and made it crack. Eris' fire snaked up his arm to collect in hand. The wind picked up. Distantly, Harry smelled ozone. The devil's power over the world trumped his windshaping. He would freeze, or the melted ice would draw the lightning.

Harry let the demonic fire build in his fist and dropped it. The air roiled with heat and the nearby hail turned to rain, but he was already gone into a half-step of Apparation and the lightning scorched the airless vacuum he left behind. _Just a few seconds..._

He felt the stretch become a white-hot lance of pain. The separation slipped, and Harry reappeared again in the place he just left. The melt became ice again, and the leftover fingers of electricity raked over him.

He fell to the stone with a strangled scream and lay there shaking.

"No..."

It hurt. All over. Harry couldn't remember ever feeling this tired. _But this can't end here_. His gaze found Mrs. Weasley, all wide staring eyes and pale fear. _This_ can't _end like this_.

Cudgeling his nervous system under control by force of will, Harry planted a hand on the ground to try and force himself upright. Instead, the dark stone gave way under his palm. His arm submerged to the elbow in swampy murk before it hardened and trapped him there. Struggling against the hold, Harry cast a vicious glare at the Gamemaster. The devil wore a small, amused smile.

 _It's playing with me._

 _Well, duh. It's been a game to it from the start._

Harry wrenched his arm free, felt more than heard the crack of wood snapping. Maybe he could break out of solid concrete without harm, but the same wasn't true of his wand. The two holly pieces barely stayed connected by the ragged phoenix feather. He stared at it for a nonplussed moment. It felt like a part of him was broken.

"No no no..."

"I really don't have a chance here," Harry commented quietly, to himself. He looked at Mrs. Weasley, shame and apology creeping into his expression. He let his wand drop to the floor. There weren't options, anymore. _I'd rather die._

The devil closed the distance between them, from the fifty foot gap Harry couldn't breach to a few yards. It studied him like he'd study a new broom at the market. Its smile was broader, sharp with satisfaction. Pleased by its acquisition, Harry judged, anger tinged; it thought it had won. Harry knew better. The fingers of the hand not clenching the remains of his wand tightened around Ginny's deathspell.

 _I'd rather die._

"Harry, no..."

Mrs. Weasley was being more responsive than she had in weeks, Harry thought with a wry snort. Maybe she could respond enough to Disapparate home, maybe not. It was out of his hands. He closed his eyes, stretched out mentally to the part of himself that was uniquely wizard, gave it a prod and a tweak, and _pushed_. Call it soul, call it magic, it flared and burned and for a second his heartbeat suspended – and then it all fluttered out.

Horror made his stomach seem to disappear, and Harry tried again. Deathspells didn't just fail. Except it did again. What in Merlin's name...?

The devil sighed, gave him a smirk. "Suicide is such a human thing," it told him, reflective. "It was Tiberius who bound me here, not Sparda. I'm not so foolish as to permit such a thing twice. Certainly you would never agree to bar it in the rules, but it is simple enough and instructive enough just to tire you. Desperation fathers ingenuity in both of your parent species."

So he was burned out? The deathspell wouldn't catalyze? Harry felt something thick and cold rise in his chest. Belatedly, he recognized it as fear. He had almost forgotten the feeling. His breath grew shallow. His heart thundered out a staccato beat.

"Not Harry..."

Death was one thing. Submission was another.

His hand closed on the hiltless sword, so tight he felt it grind at the bones of his hand. Then the sword was wrenched away by a force unseen, spinning away out of reach. Harry's desperate summoning spell was stillborn. Anger-fear filled the air with more magic. The devil brushed it away with the hand not holding Sangreus, exasperated but tolerant. For whatever reason, it reached for his face.

The air exploded.

"DON'T TOUCH HIM YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

A shockwave made both Harry and his opponent stumble. In a moment of mutual incomprehension they turned to the source. Mrs. Weasley, very non-catatonic and looking utterly furious, brandished her daughter's deathspell in a bloodless white grip. What the _fuck_? She slashed the sword diagonally and a slashing hex tore a scar in the world, followed it with a strange twirl and spellglow spilled forth. Forest green – was that a rotting curse?

Tiberius Potter's devil, its expression echoing his own feelings, twisted space between the deranged witch and itself, and the spells fizzed away.

"Get away from him!" Mrs. Weasley screamed – and sweet Merlin that was the Killing Curse. "Harry, run!"

He couldn't run if he wanted to. But then, Harry realized, his heartbeat pounding, he didn't need to. All along, all he needed was an opening, and she had given him one.

Fear and anger and desperation gave him one last jolt of adrenaline, one last Trigger - and he had one last card to play. Harry lunged. He caught Sangreus in one hand, spilling seething blood all over. The devil cursed, dropping the knife to try and put space in between them. Harry latched on to its arm, shoving all that remained of his energy at the entity lingering in their joined shadow. Doppelganger drank it in, spawned from the dark, and brought his shadow-forged knife across the devil's neck.

This was not Mundus. Doppelganger kept sawing as it tried to heal, and Harry would not let it escape.

Finally the Gamemaster dropped its gaze, favored him with a wet-snort-smile, and the human shape fell apart. In its wake a deck of cards fluttered down.

* * *

END PT VIII: DARKEST BEFORE DAWN


	9. dare to dream again

Notes: Last time on DUO, Molly Weasley was badass and Harry just about got Nelo Angelo'd. Harsh lessons all around. Also, someone just try to tell me Dante wouldn't do the exact same thing Harry does to Hermione in the second scene of these.

* * *

Harry woke up to the familiar ceiling of the Hogwarts infirmary and the sounds of soft breathing nearby. A wall of thick white sheets blocked the rest of the wing from view, but the light pouring in from the windows gave the time as late afternoon. He looked over and saw Hermione's hair pooling on the bedside table, where she was asleep on her arms next to the pile of his Devil Arms, Sangreus snug in an Eris sheath next to the Gamemaster's cards.

 _The Gamemaster. The manor. Mrs. Weasley_.

His body didn't hurt anymore. The searing burn of magical and physical exhaustion was absent, and when he raised his hand, the limb didn't shake. There was no evidence of just how close he had come to losing not just a fight but everything.

Everything. Because he was an idiot. A careless, cocky idiot.

Harry took a deep breath, blew the ends of white hair out of his eyes. He wasn't under glamour, which explained the privacy curtain. He wondered where Mrs. Weasley was. St. Mungo's, maybe.

Footsteps. The hair at the back of his neck stood up, and he reflexively tried to unlimber his wand. It wasn't there. Of course not; it was broken, the pieces left behind in the Manor.

A gap formed in the curtain, and Madam Pomfrey appeared through it. She smiled tiredly when she saw him awake and strode to his bedside. "Good to see you awake, Mr. Potter. You had some people very worried about you." She flicked her wand into her hand, scanning it over him. A general diagnostic spell, he recognized. Hermione had been learning it. The mediwitch nodded at the results and gave him a sharp look. "It looks like you're leveling out nicely. I shouldn't have to tell you this Potter, but whatever you were doing, don't do it again. Single worst case of overextension I have ever seen in all my years of practice. It's a wonder you recovered at all."

Overextension, huh. Harry pulled himself into an upright position. Pomfrey fussed, adjusting his pillow and scowling at him until he leaned into it and relaxed. The noise roused Hermione.

"I'll ask the house elves to bring up a meal for you," the mediwitch continued, overriding anything he tried to say. "You might not feel hungry now, but you will soon. There are a few potions I want you taking with food now that you're awake. I'll bring them over once you finish. I expect you to take them all, Mr. Potter." On that warning note, she left.

Hermione rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. There was a fading red blotch on her face from how she'd slept. One hand unfisted and dropped a crumpled parchment letter onto the table. The kidnapping notice. Harry was silent, not sure what to say. They hadn't talked in over a month, not since Valentines. Hermione looked him up, down, her eyes shining with relief. She shoved the table out of the way and dived on him with a hug. Harry choked back the impulse to throw her off and relaxed, patting her awkwardly on the back when he heard her start to sniffle.

After a few minutes, Hermione pulled back. She scrubbed her face with the sleeve of his infirmary gown. "Harry, I'm-"

He stopped her with a head shake. "It's nothing. Forget it."

"I should have talked with you."

"It's nothing," he repeated. Valentines was over, and if she never agreed with what he did, Harry was fine with not bringing it up.

"I agreed with _you_."

That stopped him short. Harry looked askance at her.

Hermione fixed her gaze on her hands. Her voice was little more than a whisper. "Ginny said, after what happened to Mrs. Weasley, that all she wanted was to hurt the demons for what they did. When I heard about what happened, what you did, I just thought... It just seemed fitting. At least her death meant something. At least she could accomplish her goal from beyond the grave... Ginny was practically a little sister to me. You ripped the remnants of her soul out to make a weapon and I thought it was a good thing. It scared me." She raised her head. "Remember what Ron said, back at Mr. Weasley's funeral?"

Ron said a lot of things at his father's funeral. Harry figured he knew what part she was referring to, though. "About how using light magic made him think certain ways?"

She nodded. "Fixation, I thought. Righteous anger. But I've done a lot of thinking since then, especially since Valentine's Day, and I'm not so sure anymore."

Harry waited.

"What is light magic, Harry? By definition, magic tuned for dark creature combat. But what's a dark creature? Again, by definition, any creature which preys on humanity that is vulnerable to and incapable of performing light invocation. Hags. Vampires. Werewolves. Demons. Except, phoenixes and unicorns are incapable of light invocation, too. Because they aren't human." Hermione chewed her lip and continued in a softer voice. "What is it that burns in Soulfire? What conducts sound in the Angel's Anthem? The light of humanity. Light invocation isn't just a spell; it's a trade. Humanity for power."

Harry frowned. He didn't like this theory of Hermione's. It did fit, though. Although a half-breed, Harry was a devil and incapable of light invocation. Ron was a Soulfire wunderkind, but it was hard to believe something as innocent as learned righteous anger motivated someone to slowly burn things to ash from the outside in, just to hear them scream a while longer. "Are you going somewhere with this?"

Any response was cut off by the sound of the privacy curtain being drawn back. Madam Pomfrey came through, a tray of food and potions hovering behind her. A wave of her hand made the tray float over to Harry's lap. The scent rising from a hearty helping of beef roast, potatoes, and green beans made his stomach pang. The mediwitch was right. He was hungrier than he realized. Harry dug in.

"My apologies for taking quite so long. I don't know what that Dante said to the house-elves, but they were insistent you needed pizza of all things to recover and it was difficult to convince them otherwise." Pomfrey scowled. "Supreme pizza does _not_ constitute a balanced diet..."

Harry hid a snicker by taking a swig of pumpkin juice. Hermione hid a smile with the back of her hand. They exchanged a look. The conversation wasn't done, just delayed. That was okay.

The most important things had already been said.

* * *

As the sky darkened with the coming of evening, Hermione abandoned the uncomfortable visitor's chair for a seat on the end of Harry's infirmary bed. Harry dumped the lunch dishes on the bedside cabinet and turned the abandoned lunchtray over to make a table. Shuffling the Gamemaster's deck a few times, he dealt out a hand of cards, twelve each from a set of forty-eight. The trump card came up spades. Hermione bit her lip, uncertain, and played a king of hearts. Harry laid down a nine of spades, claimed the top card, and melded a Royal Marriage.

"That's forty-four points for me. Four for the capture, forty for the meld," he explained. He traced the air with a finger, and fiery digits hung suspended to keep the score.

"I don't even..." Hermione caught his queen with an ace and drew a card. She played a king and queen of hearts. "I thought the nine of trumps was a meld by itself? And this – three and twenty, right?" She struck out the burning zero and wrote in the new score.

"Dix," Harry said with a nod, the knowledge coming to him. "Only worth ten points though. The Royal Marriage was better." He drew a card. A nine of diamonds, useless. He threw it down on Hermione's next trick.

Hermione shook her head. "Of all the things I might have expected to gain from a devil, the knowledge to play esoteric card games would not have been one of them. Aren't Devil Arms supposed to be offerings of power in exchange for life?"

"Perhaps it thought I lived a boring life?" Harry guessed, and she snorted. He took another card, considering his hand. A nine of hearts this time, also useless. Suppressing a smile, he focused his will and the new card changed into a jack of diamonds. Knowledge to play esoteric card games and the ability to cheat at them? _I think I'll keep that bit to myself. Besides, I doubt that's all they're good for..._

He heard the hospital wing door creak open and footsteps slowly approach. Hermione dropped a ten of clubs and turned to look. More interested in the game, Harry did not. He trumped Hermione's lead with the king from his Royal Marriage, drew, and played down four cards. "Jacks all around, and-"

"What game is this?"

"-Pinochle. That's ten for the capture, forty for the jacks and forty for Pinochle," Harry continued, ignoring the question. Knifing the edge of his hand through the air, he changed his score accordingly. He leaned back, tossed down an ace to lead the next trick. "Hello Ron. It's been a while." He kept his voice light, but the sight of Ron made him startle. "You look like shit."

Ron snorted. His face was drawn with tiredness and his uncombed hair stuck out at odd angles. An acrid smell of burning clung to him. Soulfire residue, Harry guessed. Half-hidden behind his leg was Ginny's deathspell. Ron's knuckles were white around the blade.

"You really shouldn't hold that so tight," Harry advised mildly. Tension ratcheted up; Hermione looked between them uncertainly. "It might be made to fight demons, but even a butter knife can cut if you apply enough pressure. Hermione, it's your turn."

Ron's jaw worked. "Mum told me to give it back to you." That was unexpected. "Give _her_ back to you. And she said to take better care of her." What. "That the least you could do is use her name." Ron raised his arm, the naked blade slicing empty air. He held it horizontally about chest level. His hand was shaking; the blade vibrated visibly with the force of it. Harry stared, actually speechless, until Ron let the hiltless sword drop back to his side. "They kidnapped my mother to get at you."

That was truth. Harry nodded mutely.

"My mother was catatonic," Ron said coarsely, "and now she's better."

That was also true.

"She told me what happened."

Harry cringed. That explained why no one came to interrogate him on waking. The idea that however many people knew how far he'd fallen, how close he came to losing everything, made him queasy. That it was Ron somehow made it even worse. If Ron was here to offer magnanimous pity, Pomfrey would be digging Sangreus out of his guts.

Ron watched his reaction, corners of his mouth curving into a smile. It was not a nice smile – Ron got that look listening to demons shriek in pain. It faltered abruptly. Ron cast a troubled glance at Hermione and sat down hard. He laid Ginny's deathspell across his lap and stared down at it.

"This is all that's left of my sister," he said quietly. "All that's left of my sister is a sword. I can't forgive you for that."

The truth again.

Harry lowered his cards to his lap, not moving his gaze. "I don't expect you to." Because what Harry saw as pragmatic, even thoughtful, Ron saw as monstrous, and monstrous things weren't forgiven.

Ron's hands clenched around Ginevra again. "Mum would be crushed if something happened to you." It was fear for him that brought her out of a catatonic state. "I want to hurt you. I want to do to you what you did to Ginny. But I could never do that to Mum. She would never forgive me if I did." He looked up at Harry steadily, and Harry read the rest in his face: _but she won't live forever._

Harry snorted, and a smirk crept onto his face unbidden. This he knew how to handle. "Hurt me? I'd like to see you try. But wait, I have. You just didn't leave much of an impression."

Ron scowled. Hermione rolled her eyes. Harry considered his cards, then cleared the table-tray and took Hermione's hand. He gave the deck a good shuffle and began to deal.

"This isn't Pinochle," said Hermione in a puzzled voice, having upturned her cards.

"Well, no," Harry allowed. "You can't play Pinochle with three people. It's not even meant for two, really. We needed a new game. Ever heard of Bartok?"

* * *

The Great Hall was nearly unrecognizable. The walls were bare, the colorful House tapestries stowed away for safekeeping, and the House tables lined the sides of the Hall, leaving a wide empty floorspace that glimmered with a dull blue-violet Harry remembered from the dueling range at Grimmauld Place, cordoned off into four arenas. The stairs that rose to the High Table made an areal transition from the range to the audience seating. Several layers of deflection and protection wards arose from the edge of each step, adding up to a very powerful defense. Madam Pomfrey stood in a still-more-protected corner with a gurney and a cabinet stocked with an extensive selection of healing potions, her face thunderous.

"Dueling tourney," he heard her gripe. "What madness made the Headmaster approve this, I will never understand."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione all shared a look.

"Is Thompson grading on this, I wonder," said Hermione, a bit wistful. Fifth years had O.W.L. exams, not professor-designed end-of-year exams, so what purpose the tourney served wasn't entirely clear.

"Bit hard to grade someone on dueling when they beat you in a fight," Ron pointed out with a droll look in Harry's direction. "You could be a bit less of a smug asshole about it, you know."

Harry smirked shamelessly. He twirled his new wand through his fingers. Twelve-and-a-half inches, holly, with one of the Pegasus' feathers as the core. Four hours and one completely burnt-out wand too many had convinced Ollivander to make one custom for him. "This would be less funny if everyone else wasn't staring at the three of us like scared little rabbits." Longbottom was determinedly not meeting his eyes, but he caught Finnegan staring and the other boy paled.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Harry, you're a terrible human being."

"That just breaks my heart."

Thompson walked out to the edge of the range, firing sparks from his wand to draw attention. The hubbub subsided. When the students' eyes came to rest on him, the Hit Wizard crossed his arms. "Everyone here is gathered for the fifth year's dueling tournament," he announced. "If you're a contestant, I want you down the Hall by the doors. If you're here to watch, you're to stay by the High Table and out of the way. Move, people!"

There was a flurry of movement. Harry rose and strolled toward the Entrance Hall.

"Jokes aside," said Hermione in undertone, "this is going to be a farce. Thompson's a good teacher, but there's only so much he can teach. No one here has a fraction of our experience, either. He knows that. If there's no grade involved, this is just..."

Harry shrugged. "What's worse, though? Getting your ass kicked, or having the fight canceled entirely because the result's just that obvious? Thompson'd have a riot on his hands."

"He'll probably pit two of us against each other in the first round. The third takes the winner. We eliminate each other and more people get to the main rounds." Obvious stated, Ron gave them a sly look. "The real question is, how much of a show are we giving them?"

Hermione gave Harry a sharp look. "No Eris, no Ginevra. No cards either. Just, no devil stuff period."

Harry allowed himself a petulant scowl before shrugging. Aside from the obvious problems, demon-related powers were most efficient at dismantling his glamours. He added his own stipulation. "Complete invocations are out. I don't trust a deflection ward against any of those."

"Combat potions would probably get us disqualified," Ron considered, and then made a face. "This will be so boring. We're going vanilla!"

"Imagine that," Hermione said with amusement. "Using basic dueling magic in an intraschool dueling tourney."

Thompson shot more sparks, ending the conversations that had sprung up. "First block! Blaise Zabini and Mandy Brocklehurst, proceed to range one! Susan Bones and Parvati Patil, range two! Vincent Crabbe and Dean Thomas, range three! Anthony Goldstein and Daphne Greengrass, range four!"

The designated students each walked out into the middle of the enchanted Hall and gave a bow to each other, to the professor, and to the watching crowd. They unlimbered wands, turned their backs to one another, and walked ten paces. The scenario magic took hold, changed the stone floor to a misty swamp, and each pair swung into motion. It was dreadfully dull.

Harry cringed. "This is going to take _forever_."

Hours passed as the first round ground on. Ron's guess turned out to be incorrect; each of them were in completely different blocks. Hermione vanished into illusion foliage with a charm and took out her opponent with a single stunner. Ron buried his opponent up to the neck in conjured dirt. Harry's bored disarming charm blasted Michael Corner's shield spell into tatters and threw him out of the arena entirely for a ring-out. When a look askance at Thompson did not clarify whether ring-outs were counted, Harry stuck him to the floor with a sticking charm.

"I almost feel guilty for that one," Harry remarked as Corner stormed out of the Hall.

"You could at least pretend to take them seriously," said Hermione, but she was betrayed by her lips twitching into a smile.

The second and third elimination rounds went similarly, with a break in between for lunch. Of the five block victors, Harry drew the bye for the first round of the quarterfinal. The remaining block victors, Anthony Goldstein and Ernie Macmillan, breathed sighs of relief when Ron and Hermione drew each other. Harry faced the winner of the duel between his friends, which, after the first impressive fight of the tournament, ended up being Hermione.

They grinned at each other from across the expanse of the empty Hall, as the final rounds used a single arena. Hermione was riding a Pepper-Up Potion to make up for her earlier bout. They gave the usual perfunctory bows, took ten long paces each, and waited for the scenario to begin.

The Hall became a cemetery.

The sky was a stormy gray that threatened rain. The earth squelched underfoot, catching at his shoes. There was a building not far away, just past the violet perimeter of the arena, and not far from it was an old yew that reached up with leafless branches. Everything else was overgrown green grass and crumbling old gravestones. They circled each other, wands at the ready.

Harry knew from experience Hermione would not attack unless she was good and ready. Unlike Ron, she would not be baited with taunts or false openings. It was up to him to take the offensive.

 _Just the way I like it._

Swish, tri-loop, jab – a sector of ice bloomed into existence. Harry prepped a cone of wind as he fired a bludgeoning curse, sending a hail of frozen daggers at Hermione. He swept his wand low and the earth at her feet grew fangs. The witch turned on her heel, avoiding the spikes with ease, inscribing a circle with her wand: a reversal shield. The hail of knives changed targets, moving even faster.

Harry leaped back. He expected the tactic. He drew a line at the ice and loosed his wind spell, followed it with the full fury of a burning curse. The ice sublimated. The wind chased boiling hot vapor back at Hermione. His wand moved reflexively through the motions of his general use spell-chain. A reductor curse turned the nearest grave to shrapnel. A slashing hex severed the air on her other side. He skipped ahead to the percussion curse to avoid nulling the vapor and took pause.

The spells pinioned Hermione in place. Her eyes narrowed and her wand tore a line straight up. The enchanted dirt fountained into a wall to block the burning wind. A spell turned it solid as stone and thrust it in Harry's direction. She waved her hands expansively, and the larger bits of grave rose to circle her, shield and ammunition in one.

Jerk-snap, tri-loop, jab... flick.

" _Aquafrio flagulatus longus tria_!" The holly wandtip spawned three long tails of blue-white frost magic. Harry flipped his wrist and the whips lashed out, coiling around the witch's earth wall projectile and redirecting its momentum upward.

Hermione's eyes went comically wide, and she backpedaled. "Oh, you can't be serious-"

Harry bared his teeth in a nasty smile and yanked the block of freezing earth back down. She nailed it with a reductor curse, desperately dodging falling chunks. Harry lapsed the _extensor_ freezing charm in favor of a forward barrage of percussion curses that chewed through her circling stone protection. The witch liked her shields and redirects but often lacked on damage output. When they sparred in training, she usually teamed with Ron.

Redirects. Hm, that gave him an idea.

He transitioned back to his general spell-chain. Hermione weaved from side to side to dodge, her every footstep going squish against the sodden soil, crosshatching the air with layers of slashing hex. Baiting an energy shield? Harry chilled the ground as he flattened to avoid the assault. The frozen ground was solid enough to absorb a _Spongify_ enchantment. He surged to his feet with speed and launched into the air well over the hurricane of stone shards that was Hermione's next attack.

The injunction against devil power denied him an air hike or a proper wind invocation, so Harry molded a powerful wind spell and paired it with a hover charm to slow his descent. Jerk-snap, swish-jab, " _Homus fulgur_!"

The air came alive with crimson lightning. Pale but determined, Hermione raised a _Caelum praesidium_ energy shield. The fingers of electricity skimmed over the spell surface, spilled over the side like rain, and recombined at the soggy ground to lance up through the witch's legs. Harry switched to a summoning charm as soon as he heard her scream, dragging her up out of the electrified murk to safety. Being pragmatic, he stunned her to end the battle before he caught her.

The scenario illusion collapsed. Harry landed comfortably on solid stone, Hermione limp in his grip. Pomfrey gave him a furious glare before she looked her over, testing her reflexes for nerve damage. She issued a potion and Hermione left to join Ron in the stands.

Predictably, the finals match was a joke. Macmillan folded faster than Hermione playing strip poker.

When it was done, the Hall was put back together for dinner. More eyes than usual focused on him and his friends as they ate, but Harry ignored them. Even against the bare minimum of his skills no one here could match him. What could they do if he didn't hold back?

Harry paused at the thought. A lot of things, probably. The Gamemaster had taught him a harsh lesson about carelessness. He gave the watchers his best glower until they looked away.

* * *

The term wound down. The professors suspended access to the grounds outside of classes due to the progressive upswing in demon appearances. Dante spent more and more time out of the castle, called away to deal with a devil appearance in Vertik, in Aubrey, in Wiltshire. There was no logic to the attacks that Harry could determine, just a seething cycle of breaching and death. The tension and fear invaded Hogwarts in the form of death notices, and Harry found himself barraged with tearful faces begging him for dueling training.

 _Haha, nope._

Dumbledore gave him a patented disappointed look, but Harry took a mildly sadistic glee in crushing their hopes. They could train themselves. He wasn't their savior.

"But Voldemort is _your_ enemy," Finnegan protested when Harry shot him down on the way to lunch.

A hot spark of anger alighted, but Harry kept it from showing on his face. He canted his head slightly to the side as though considering the point. "My enemy," he repeated. "Of course. He and his followers killed Ron's dad and brother, drove Longbottom's parents to insanity, turned the Ministry into a killing field, and completely leveled Azkaban, but that doesn't make him anyone else's enemy. Just mine."

The boy made a sullen face. "Don't pretend you give a damn, Potter. If you did you would help instead of holing up somewhere crowing about 'resonating pair-cast inverse invocations' or whatever. For all your talk, you're just a self-centered _coward_!"

"My inclination to teach you advanced combat magic is skyrocketing as we speak," Harry said snidely as they entered the Great Hall. "There's this variant on the Entrail-Expelling Curse I haven't quite mastered yet. Let's find an empty classroom and work on it together."

Finnegan abruptly lost his voice. His face the color of milk gone off, he skittered away from Harry to sit on the other end of the Gryffindor table. Ron guffawed as they seated themselves.

"'Find an empty classroom and work on it together'?" he repeated, still sniggering. "You reckon he ran like a bitch because of the curse or because he thought you were flirting?"

Harry spat out his bite of potatoes. "I'd say not to insult my taste, but he's stupid enough to think that."

"It was rather thoughtless to go from asking a favor to insulting you in the same conversation." Hermione scowled in his direction and pushed a napkin at him. "The more I see of them, the more relieved I am that I didn't try putting up an argument to include more people in our Defense practices early on. The prospect of Finnegan's sort turning our lessons on us seems less and less paranoid as time goes on. And what are _you_ staring at?"

The last statement was pointed at the older student that had joined them at the High Table end of the Gryffindor table. The blue and bronze lines on his robes marked him a Ravenclaw, but his hazel-eyed brunet visage was unremarkable and unfamiliar.

"You lot, obviously," he said with an easy grin. "Who else? The three of you are the only interesting ones in this whole school."

"Way to come off like a creep," said Ron irritably. "Clear off. Shoo."

The Ravenclaw just shook his head, patent smile in place. "Can't do that, Weasley. I have a job to do."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "If you're so uninteresting, why should we care about your job?"

"I'd call it simple human kindness, but then..." He looked significantly at Harry, who tensed in alarm. "Well, you should care because my job is to give you all a message. Two of them."

"And those are?"

"I don't know if you noticed, but we're a little short on staff right now." The student indicated the High Table with a lazy motion. "There was a bit of a problem out in the forest earlier and the professors were called out to deal with it since the devil hunter's busy."

Harry had noticed the faculty weren't present, but as that wasn't unusual for lunchtime, he had thought little of it. The fact that the Ravenclaw saw fit to point it out was troubling, however. His fingers itched for his wand or Sangreus. "And the other one?"

The student shot him another grin, showing a surprising amount of teeth. "The second, well, it's a bit shorter. Just as well since I don't have much time left. Time to play, Potter. I'm a distraction."

 _A distraction? From wh- oh fuck._

The air vibrated with the scarlet energy that indicated breachwending in action.

* * *

END PT IX: DARE TO DREAM AGAIN


	10. do unto others

Notes: the finale. It's been a fun journey.

* * *

The Great Hall was alive with demons and fear. Panicked screaming pierced Harry's ears as he shot to his feet, wand and Sangreus slipping automatically to hand. The latter buried itself firmly in the Ravenclaw's chest and fell to the floor with a clang when false human flesh turned to slime. Some kind of body double or flesh copy, but not a Doppelganger, thankfully. That might be trouble.

Irrelevant for now, though. Harry exchanged a speaking glance with Ron and Hermione. This was the worst sort of situation.

"Herd them into a corner and I'll cover them," Hermione said grimly, referring to the screaming, useless mass of flailing human bodies.

Heatless ivory fire already popped over Ron's outstretched hand. "I'll cover them," he disagreed. "You handle the breach." She nodded.

Harry gave the fistful of Soulfire a disdainful look. He summoned his knife back in hand and moistened it with a line of blood from his arm. "Fine. You two play shepherd, I'll take the front."

The corner of Ron's mouth rose in the beginnings of a nasty smile. This was no place to deck him for being an ass, though, so Harry hiked his way over the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables to the center of the action in time to sink Sangreus into the back of a Pride as it scythed down at a Hufflepuff firstie. Her dusky skin was bleached pale with terror as she shrank beneath the table.

Harry began a spell-chain, launching a few volleys around the students that served as inadvertent meat shields. He spun on a heel to bury Sangreus in the face of a charging Lust, drew a line up in a slashing hex that bisected a summoning Greed by the end of the Ravenclaw table. Instinct bit and he lunged over the Hufflepuff table, scattering dishes and dinner all over the floor and himself as a bolt of crimson rocketed through his previous position. Through the red haze of breaching he saw multiple oozing batlike monsters wing around for another go. Blood-goyles.

"Everyone, get down!" Harry rolled to a crouch on the tabletop. Jerk-snap, tri-loop, circumscribed- " _Glacius flagulatus longus_!"

Fifteen feet of frost lashed a circle around him. The elevated ice spell trapped a handful of enemies in icy prisons and killed a few outright. A few reductor curses shot out from students below the table to shatter the frozen Hells. Harry ignored the rest in favor of the blood-goyles, rolling to avoid a charge. Sangreus sank into the heart of another. He turned his wrist, redirecting the frost whip to impale a third, and shattered it with a motion.

The air _gonged_. Incoming Sloth teleport. Harry hiked over a vicious scythe strike. Sangreus leaped obediently into his open hand, and Harry sawed through the sandspun flesh of the Sloth's neck.

The lethal front that was Ron's Soulfire expanded. Harry cast _Caelum praesidium_ as a stopgap as he wrapped himself in a second frost circle, releasing the whip in a final blast of glacial power to clear a landing spot when he leaped to the Slytherin table. There he took momentary pause to consider threats. Some blood-goyles persisted; one was in the process of dividing as he watched. The eerie haze of breachwending vanished, but energy still made the air vibrate with the onset of reinforcements – a Greed, where?

There, near the door. It was out of the way of crossfire but with enough free space to go about its business without issue: surprisingly smart positioning for a Hell's Army grunt. " _Discutio_!" The spell ripped through its defensively-raised coffin and the Greed exploded into sand.

The damage was done, though. Harry kept an eye on the wavering summon energy as he switched targets back to the half-dozen blood-goyles. How to take them down quickly? Thinking quickly, he hiked into the air, shaping a gale to hold him there, and sent a knockback jinx smashing into the ice-encrusted table. A sweep of his wand caused the knife-sharp shards to fly up and shot them rocketing toward the demons. A volley of blasting curses turned their stoned forms into dust.

He heard a yell. "Watch it Potter!"

There was someone under his piece of table. Harry laughed out loud. "Aw, Parkinson, did I _scare_ you?"

"Not just me, you lunatic!"

The Greed's last summon snapped into place. Two tall figures coalesced from the smoke. The new enemies were covered from head and toe in downy white feathers and brandished lethally-sharp lances of blue light. Multiple pairs of thin wings pumped the air as they wheeled around and fixed their attention on Harry.

 _Fallen. This could be fun._

Harry hiked over to the open space by the doors to the Entrance Hall, where there was more room and no cover for students to cower behind. When the Fallen did not immediately follow, he made a come-hither gesture with Sangreus. "What's wrong? Scared?"

Swooping! Harry sidestepped once, twice. Sangreus skipped over the surface of a gleaming protective wing as he spun on his heel. Holly sketched a loop and a jab for a percussion curse at the second Fallen, which floated backward through the wall. Hairline cracks formed in the ancient stone.

Fallen were one of the few lesser demon breeds capable of phasing through ordinary matter. Harry needed to stay close, but they, wisely, seemed inclined to keep their distance.

 _Too bad_ , he thought.

He wet Sangreus' edge again. Jerk-snap, five loops like a rounded star, jab- an incantation, and a stream of seething black flowed from the wandtip, sizzling and popping with heat. Harry swept the _extensor_ burning curse in a loop to his side as he waited in place, tempting another lunge. It came and he turned, avoiding the lance strike with a quick motion as the burning whip coiled around the demon.

It shrieked, long and loud. The second Fallen swooped in to support, slashing its lance like a longsword. Harry jerked his wand to the side, tossing the first Fallen into its partner. He dashed forward, throwing the momentum behind a savage strike to the trapped Fallen's side. Deceptively brittle bones snapped as he twisted the knife and then tore it free. Feathers and flesh stank as they burned.

The demon keened. Its protective wing fell away from its body, limp and twitching.

"If I had a face like that, I'd hide it too," Harry gibed lightly. He reversed his grip on Sangreus and plunged it deep in the center of the demon's eyes, turned and ripped.

Intuition bit.

Harry abandoned his weapons to backstep in time to avoid the light lance that sprouted from below. The second Fallen phased out from the floor, manifesting another lance that it used to swipe at him. Harry ducked under the attack, throwing out an arm in a wordless invocation of wind that caught the Fallen's wing and set it spinning.

The first Fallen wasn't quite dead yet. Harry left his knife and wand where they kept it incapacitated, instead reaching up behind his shoulder. His hand curled around Ginevra. Eris peeled free from the sword to wreathe his arm in fire, sloughing off the aversion spells that hid it as she went. As the Fallen came in for another attack with its lance, Harry met it with the wet edge of Ginevra. The lance shattered. Fire welled in Harry's fist and he pressed forward, slamming it home on the demon's protective wing.

The Fallen recoiled. It tried resummoning its weapon, but Harry was faster. Ginevra cut across, rending the wing into a mess of ruined feathers and sinking deep into its naked true face. The demon dissipated into light too quickly to even scream.

Harry slung Ginevra across his back again, snapping his fingers. First his wand and then Sangreus flew back into his hands. The second Fallen struggled feebly as the removal of the knife gave it the opportunity to regenerate. Too little, too late. Harry dropped his hand, and demonic fire scorched the air and the demon to ash.

"Too hot to handle," he remarked, sparing a smirk at his own poor humor before he turned back to look over the Great Hall.

 _What a mess._

The tables were trashed. Piles of demon dust spattered all over. Frost from Harry's attacks layered the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables, and the other two tables were almost entirely gone, victims of Ron's Soulfire. Harry smelled human blood mixed in with the smell of magic. He neglected counting, though he saw several bodies. It was a foregone conclusion that not everyone would survive an incursion in the middle of lunch. In that light, maybe he should try to look less satisfied than he felt.

Another time.

He turned to face the doors. Demonic energy webbed over them. Some kind of sealing spell, but not conventional magic. _Alohomora_ was of no use here, but maybe the Gamemaster's cards...

Ron's footsteps approached. "Going for the professors?"

Harry nodded. He was willing to place a stiff bet that the Great Hall was not the only place in the castle attacked. However skilled they were, he and his friends were only three people. To clear the castle they needed the professors, who were outside dealing with whatever problem the fake student mentioned. "If you could get up to the Tower, the map could help you round the students up. This time of day, if they aren't here, they could be anywhere."

"Of course that would be the only thing you don't carry with you on a regular basis." Exasperation, and the familiar note of anger Ron would never quite be able to hide; Harry did carry Ginevra, after all. "Whatever. How do you plan to get past the seal? Blasting curses will take forever."

"Not sure I could afford that kind of repair bill, anyway," Harry said dryly. He fished around in his small mokeskin pouch for one of the Gamemaster's cards. "Imagine what Snape would say. 'Even worse than that arrogant lout you call a father! He never had any respect for lesser people either!'"

Ron snorted. "Speaking of... your roots are showing."

"That'll be fun to explain. Stand back."

Harry swept his white fringe from his eyes. Holding the card lengthwise between his middle and ring fingers, he extended it toward the sealed doors. Strictly speaking, unsealing the doors was not a requirement to passing through. It was sufficient to move them elsewhere for the time being. Concentrating on that thought, he fed the card his Devil Trigger. His blood was practically boiling with it from the previous fight, but the drain left him cold with fatigue before-

 _shing_

-the card shattered. Space warped. A hole opened up in the sealed doors, painted shifting red and black from his Devil Trigger. Through it Harry saw the Entrance Hall and a handful more lesser demons.

"To think we played strip poker with those things," Ron commented, face twisted. "Good luck."

* * *

The 'bit of a problem' out in the forest had spilled out onto the grounds by the time Harry got there. Death Eaters ducked in and out of a veritable crowd of demons, everything from blood-goyles and Prides to Abysses and Vanguards. A small army of animated statues worked to keep the demons from scattering past the line of professors, courtesy of McGonagall; golden mist shimmered around them, Flitwick's enchantment twisting spatial perception; Thompson was a whirling dervish of ice and earth. Dumbledore was invisible, hidden from sight by the two Hell Vanguards tag-teaming him.

Harry frowned.

By keeping the conflict at the forest edge, the Death Eaters forced the defenders to limit their arsenal or risk setting the forest ablaze. Fiendfyre and Soulfire were out on that consideration. Still, although complete invocations were as a rule unsafe in groups, Harry and Ron both managed it, so Dumbledore certainly could – why wasn't he fielding an Angels' Anthem?

 _What's going on here...?_

Discarding the thought as irrelevant for the moment, Harry pulled his wand. He let his mind wander, grasped the feeling that was both warm and cold, soft and knife-sharp; the Demonic Invocation of Air caused the light breeze around him to build into a howling gale. The fiendish intelligence in it seethed and writhed against him as he molded it into the form of a hunting bird and fed it the image and idea of the demons and Death Eaters and _make them all die_.

The airhawk shrieked a warcry and plunged into the horde, sending up a tornado of dust and a small fountain of gore. Harry came up beside McGonagall.

"Potter! What are you _doing_ here?"

"There are demons in the castle," he said without fanfare. "Thought you'd like to know. What's going on?"

"Demons in the-" She looked thunderstruck. "But that couldn't- it would have to be- he's targeted the _students_?"

In the seconds of horrified staring that ensued, a few demons made it past the defensive line. Harry mentally tugged on the airhawk, which peeled out of the main horde and made a loop-dive, streaming death behind it to dust the escapees. He felt something akin to Devil Trigger which made the hair on his neck stand up.

"We have to protect the students... but we can't just let them overrun the grounds. We need-" McGonagall stopped. She gave her wand a wave, and the ground sprouted a huge fist of rock that scooped up a group of approaching demons and crushed them. She looked at Harry, her expression troubled. "We need to stop them coming. We can hold them here, but the Death Eaters won't let us get through to investigate. Even Albus is pinned."

By... geez, _four_ Hell Vanguards now. Where in hell were they all coming from?

The strange energy peaked. It sparked over him, teasing at his Devil Trigger. Harry clamped down on it to keep from transforming.

McGonagall scowled grimly. "More reinforcements. Someone has to be manipulating the breach in the forest."

A standard breach might attract demons or a devil who could summon more, but unless it tapped the Bloody Palace it wouldn't pass demons in waves. There weren't a lot of people with the knowledge to manipulate an interplanar breach like this.

"Voldemort." Hopefully. They already knew they weren't dealing with the violent revolutionary from the first war, but if the dark lord had gone so far as to teach his servants advanced breach manipulation...

"...possibly." McGonagall pulled a face. "Mr. Potter, I am reluctant to ask, but-"

Harry stopped her. "I'll handle the breach." An echo from earlier came to mind and he smirked wryly. "Taking out Voldemort may not be my job, but I've always been partial to the idea."

From her staggered look, that was not at all what McGonagall intended to ask. Before the professor could protest, he pulled together a few stray gusts of wind. Harry hiked well over the crowd, channeling scraps of infernal energy into aerial platforms for extra height. Then he Triggered, catching the gusts in his wing-flaps to go soaring over the horde. The airhawk traced him at the surface, scissoring anything that tried to intercept him, and Harry landed safely just in the forest perimeter.

Relaxing back into human form, he brought up a shield with his wand to block a scythe from nowhere. He ghosted Sangreus' edge across his forearm and thrust it into the face of a Hell Lust. He wheeled around, sidestepping another scythe-thrust, and launched a reductor curse into the face of a Gluttony. Then, bending his will, he sent the airhawk for a direct charge through the woods in the direction he sensed the infernal aura.

"Sorry folks, but I've got some business to take care of." He gave the remaining lesser demons a mocking wave and tailed the fiend of wind.

* * *

It was easy to see when Harry came closer to the location of the deep forest breach. Foliage grew more and more sparse, the only survivors being tendrils of Greater Hydra or Devil's Snare or similar plants that fought as savagely as any monster. Demon dust piled around, staining the dirt, and there was a distinct scent of rot and rancid meat from the corpses of animals that had run afoul of the demons.

The effect of the infernal energy grew more powerful, half-sparking Devil Trigger periodically. It fed the fire in his veins. Almost jittery from the excess energy, Harry made short, brutal work of the few demons unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Where most breaches were only visible by magic or while something traversed them, the forest breach was a swollen crimson scar in space. It stretched some thirty feet across, hovered about chest-height in the air on one side, and plunged underground on the other, bleeding energy that lit the ravaged hollow with weak neon glow. By now adjusted, Harry's eyes picked up the tall, slim figure that leaned over the scar, back to him. He'd been right: it was Voldemort. Except... not.

Several things fell into place.

"Does it count as a family reunion if we're kin by a dark ritual?" Harry asked mildly. "I gotta say, Voldemort, time has done you no favors."

The hunched figure chuckled. "I beg to differ, Potter. The past five months have served me _wonders_. A bit like yourself, I imagine." Voldemort turned on his heel, startlingly quick. His eyes gleamed a familiar scarlet that seemed to glow in the dimness. The pasty pallor from the graveyard had grown over with hard red-brown scales, the long fingers terminated in thick talons, and as he spoke, flashes of fang were visible. "I'd wondered if I would see you today. It seemed unlikely that the old fool would let you face me."

Harry shrugged. "He's a bit busy, and I don't have a good record for following his advice recently anyway. The lecture I got after you set those demons loose in Hogsmeade – well, he wasn't happy with me." _That_ was an understatement. How weird was it that Ginny's mother understood his intent better than exalted onlookers? Moving on. "I'm curious: just what about the past months has helped you? There's no political objective in slaughtering children, and no challenge in killing defenseless Muggles or emaciated prisoners or – most of your recent targets, actually."

"Don't be naive," Voldemort replied, irritation in his sibilant voice. "The blood that changed me came from you. Half-breeds, maybe, but we are demons. Psychic predators. Don't pretend not to understand the power that can be won through a little extra death."

So he was right. Fear, horror, pain. Voldemort was milking the wizarding world for misery. For what purpose, even? Not for any grand scheme like he professed. The taste of misery was sweet and power was even sweeter. Harry knew it well enough.

But misery was cheap. Misery wasn't the power that beat the Gamemaster. Harry preferred what did.

"So much for the great revolutionary. You're an addict, Voldemort, an animal." Harry's lips curled into a sneer. He took his wand in one hand and Sangreus in the other. For once, he left the knife dry. The magic in his blood was of no use here. Harry beckoned with the weapons and a mocking smile. "I think it's time I put you down."

"A year ago you escaped with your life only by several turns of good fortune," said Voldemort. His taloned hand disappeared into his robes and brought his wand to bear. "It will be fun to destroy you once and for-"

Harry chucked Sangreus at his face.

Voldemort ripped his wand up in an aegis shield and then followed into the motions of a spell-chain: a blasting curse, a severing curse, something unfamiliar, a lightning spell, the Cruciatus -

Harry nimbly dodged, summoning his knife back into his open palm. He waved at the ground, wrenching an array of lethally sharp spikes from the earth beneath his enemy. Jerk-snap, five loops like a rounded star, circumscribed: " _Exsectus flagulatus – exsectus effluo_!" Seven feet of hissing, spitting maroon energy lashed out in a circle, spraying shards of slashing hex all around.

Voldemort ascended into the air to avoid both attacks, but not quite fast enough. Spell scatter ripped through the tail of his robes and sliced clean lines in the sparse plating of his legs. The cuts bubbled blood but sealed in seconds. _Devil regeneration._ He drew a curve at the earth.

Harry cursed as dust-turned-acid chewed through his shoes and bit into the flesh of his feet. A quick air hike removed him from the pool. He molded the stale air into a howling gale to slow his descent and buffet the hovering dark lord. " _Conglaciare_!" The pool turned to a block of solid ice, and Harry dropped to the ground with a blasting curse that fed the air acid knives. His wand moved through the motions of his own spell-chain, substituting Sangreus for the fire.

The volley smashed into a conjured silver shield. Voldemort snatched the knife from the air, eyes narrow with annoyance, and countered with a confining barrage of alternating blasting curses and sizzling lightning strikes. Rather than consign himself to an aegis shield, Harry Triggered and launched forward. The spells glanced off transforming flesh. His hand fisted about Ginevra and he swung her in a broad horizontal arc that turned the hollow bright with carmine energy.

Voldemort laughed out loud. He abandoned flight to avoid the slash, catching Ginevra's edge with Sangreus. His wand rose to Harry's face. " _Homus putrefacio_!"

Backpedaling, Harry turned on his heel and prodded the dregs of his wind invocation to wrench the fallen chunks of ice into the path of the forest-green bolt. Seizing the opportunity, Voldemort darted in with his knife for a quick stab. A mistake: Harry pushed the arm aside and plunged the free Ginevra into his torso, twisting and tearing savagely. He jumped back when the dark lord released a furious snarl, narrowing avoiding a point-blank bludgeoning curse.

"Looks like you've been picking on weaklings for so long you've forgotten how to actually fight," Harry taunted. Devil Trigger turned his voice guttural. "Here's a hint: stick with weapons you know how to use."

Eyes blazing, Voldemort threw Sangreus to the ground where it sank hilt-deep into the broken soil. "And you, Potter, should learn to finish enemies while you have the chance."

The shadows grew deeper, warping and writhing in the corners of his eyes. Long fingers of blue-black pinched free from the dark, opening electric-blue eyes as they hissed at Harry.

"Phantom snakes?" Harry shrugged his shoulders in exasperation, something that probably looked strange in devil form. "Would you like to buy some originality?"

The shadows dived as one, a dozen pairs of needle-sharp fangs. Harry leaped out of the way, a reflex that put him directly in the path of an advanced bludgeoning curse. His ribs cracked and he flew back with a strangled scream, skidding over the ground on his back. Breathing harshly he crossed himself with Ginevra, barking the incantation for a deflective ward that blasted the shadow-snakes back while he flipped to his feet.

The serpent familiars swam through the air to surround him, lunging in all at once. Harry nailed a few with blasting curses and hiked over them, pulling in a swell of wind to avoid the barrage of brilliant green spell-glow that homed in on his new position.

Obviously the tactic here was to keep him on the run, but Voldemort was no Gamemaster. Harry lowered his hand, stretching out fingers of magic to wrench an earth barrier between he and his opponent and imbue it with an aegis shield. With a mental twist, he diverted a fraction of his Trigger toward his own shadow. Doppelganger rose from the darkness. Harry gave it a mental command to keep the familiars occupied and side-rolled out from behind the wall just in time to avoid the backwash of a Killing Curse that blew it to dust. Harry brought Ginevra around and sliced twice in a cross pattern, lacing the air with lines of carmine energy that closed in on Voldemort.

The dark lord flew back gracefully, tracing a negligent arc. Harry threw himself to the side as a circle of dark blue appeared beneath him. The earth rumbled, and the inscribed dirt exploded toward the sky. A lance of bright green bore down, bracketed by maroon streaks of slashing curse and backed by the red-white shock of a lightning spell.

Harry turned Ginevra so her point drew a line in the ground. Stone molded from the earth to form a shield that shattered upon intercepting the Killing Curse. The fragments caught his wind spell and a spell-chain volley rocketed toward Voldemort, who sneered as he phased his shield back into existence.

 _Just as planned._

Harry snapped his fingers. Eris leapt to answer the call, threading sinuously over his shoulder and down his arm. She fountained into a pillar of fire wide enough for fringe embers to spill over the edges of the silver shield, grasping with fingers of flame for the power behind the shield: Voldemort's very flammable wand. It turned to ash and the shield dissipated. Harry stabbed Ginevra into the dirt and dropped out of his devil form, pressing his advantage. His wand moved into a spell-chain.

" _Glacius_! _Accio_! _Arduro_!" The ice-encrusted wizard flew toward Harry. The momentum imparted by the summoning charm magnified the effect of the percussion curse, and there was a satisfying crunch before he crashed to the ground. Harry tossed his wand to his off hand and took up Ginevra.

Reduced to a groaning splat on the forest floor, Voldemort looked up, wild, wounded fury in his scarlet eyes. Something thrummed in the air, different from the infernal aura that even now crackled and popped.

Instinct made Harry move. He hiked out of the line of fire and threw up an aegis shield at the zenith of his flight. It was for nothing; the blue-black wash of Voldemort's deathspell flew past and under him, catching him in the edges, heading for-

The crimson scar that was the deep forest breach tore wide open. The dark forest canopy gave way to a starless night sky, a shallow sea of blood, and a seemingly endless army of Hells. This was more than he could handle alone. Grimly, Harry beckoned Doppelganger from its fallen foes and back to his side. His best hope was to drive them back enough to reseal the gap, but even that would be tricky in the face of so many...

"Looks like you could use a little help here, kid."

Startled, Harry wheeled around to brandish Ginevra in the face of the sudden speaker. Dante looked cross-eyed at the point, nudging it away from his face with a finger and a nonchalant expression. Wasn't he supposed to be away on Ministry business? Moreover, "Why is it you keep showing up _after_ all the important bits?"

Dante threw up his hands in an expressive shrug. The dark gauntlets that were once the pegasus gleamed. "Would you really want me to show up earlier?"

"I suppose this way is a bit more fun," Harry admitted. He reached for one of the Gamemaster's cards. "Shall we?"

* * *

With the castle overrun, to no one's surprise there was no choice but to send the students home prematurely. They were strongly advised to remain home until Voldemort's death could be proven and his now-manic followers corralled. While most of the exams were canceled, the OWL and NEWT students were scheduled to do their tests off-site at a secure Ministry compound.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were called in to the stuffy, poorly-ventilated building to take their tests at the end of June. In the mornings they were assigned to drastically separate desks and given special quills bewitched with an anti-cheating charm to work through the theory portion; in the afternoons, the desks were cleared, and the proctors took subsets of students to test their practical.

All of his training didn't keep Harry from getting his Divination examiner's life and love lines mixed up in a palm reading or from forgetting why the wizards of Liechtenstein refused to back the formation of the International Confederation of Wizards, but he did finish his written exams for Charms, Transfiguration, Defense, and Potions in a third of the allotted time. The practicals were likewise a joke; the only interesting thing that happened was a thorough discussion of the strengths and vulnerabilities of lesser demons with the examiner in Care of Magical Creatures. Apparently Tofty did freelance devil hunting in his younger years... back in the eighteenth century.

After two weeks of this, they received a special notice to come in for the defense of their project.

Harry sat with Ron next to the speaker's dais where Hermione took point on the last part of their talk. Harry had taken the first part, with the background and a demonstration of Fiendfyre; Ron had followed with an explanation of light invocation and a plume of Soulfire. Now, Hermione was knitting the concepts together and explaining their line of experimentation.

"...both of these spells are immensely powerful on their own but suffer the downside of being extremely difficult to control," she summarized. "However, our hypothesis was that they, being aligned to the same element but of opposed spiritual type, would display a resonance effect when pair-cast. The resonant would possess the power of the individual spells but lack the near-sentience that makes them dangerous."

"Um, Miss Granger?" The examiner at the end of the table, ancient with a terrible combover and pasty skin, raised his hand like a student with a question. "Just to clarify, you are proposing the creation of a spell matching the destructive power of an invocation without the inherent risk to the caster?"

The examiner panel were almost unanimously pale at the idea. Tofty, the exception, looked thrilled.

"Not a spell, sir," Hermione disagreed. The panel relaxed; Harry and Ron stifled snickers. If they thought that was a relief, the panel was to be sorely disappointed. "Unfortunately, we discovered very shortly into our investigation that while the spiritual element does in fact cancel out, the effect is of little obvious utility: it explodes. In the interest of limiting danger to the caster or casters, a massive explosion is little different than the original invocations. So we changed our tactics. Harry? Ron? Would you please?"

She cleared the dais with a wave of her wand.

Harry reached back to curl his fingers around Eris' bottom. He held the hand back out with an ember crackling in his palm. Ron tapped his palm with his wand to stoke a tongue of Soulfire to life. Slowly, carefully, Hermione went through the motions that wrest the two sparks together and temporary arrest their catalytic resonance. The sparks became encased in what looked like a glass bauble, the size of a snitch. She cupped it in her hand and held it up to display it to the panel.

"Fourteen years ago, Sirius Black was accused of blowing up a street and a dozen Muggles. The blast was powerful enough to crack open the sewer system. It was considered a staggering, terrifying feat of magic. By comparison, the last time a fire invocation got completely out of hand of the caster, we had the Great Fire of London." Hermione paused for emphasis. "No, examiner, this is not a spell. It's a bomb."

A moment of silence, before a wispy-haired witch near the center spoke up. "I am afraid I don't approve. What possible purpose could such a thing have?"

Almost on cue, a loud bang and a swell of screams cut short their defense. Wizards and witches began to spill into the testing room from the security checkpoint, fleeing what Harry sensed was a minor planar rift and a few lesser demons. Distantly, he heard a groan before another explosion rocked the compound, turning the interconnecting wall to rubble. A Hell Wrath.

Demons and their timing. Harry palmed his wand and Sangreus and gave the witch a disconcerting smile. "I don't know ma'am. Why don't we find out?"

* * *

END PT X: DO UNTO OTHERS


End file.
